


The profoundest fact

by someinstant



Series: Truth to be a liar [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-12
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:36:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jobs go badly, sometimes.  Just usually not when Arthur plans them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of a three part story cycle. For those concerned about becoming overly invested in never-to-be-finished WiPs, have no fear: the first story in the cycle is already finished, and the second is in its editing stages. By the time I finish posting the second story, I anticipate having the third ready for posting-- so hopefully there will be no long, painful waits for updates.
> 
> I owe a huge thank-you to Scila over on LJ for her generous help with some translation work, not to mention her descriptions of Brazil and its political climate. Without her help, this story would look much, much different, and would probably be infinitely poorer. Any mistakes-- linguistically, factually, geographically, &c-- are wholly my own. The world of _Inception_ is the property of Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. Pictures, and no infringement is intended. I write for pleasure, not for profit.

**  
_Part One._   
**

* * *

_Todos los hombres, en algún momento de sus vida, se sienten solos. Y lo están. Vivir es separarnos de lo que fuimos para acercarnos a lo que seremos en el futuro. La soledad es el hecho más profundo de la condición humana._  
Octavio Paz

* * *

 **Brasilia, Distrito Federal, Brazil.  
17.09.14**

"I understand your position, Mr. Souza," he said smoothly, careful to keep his tone polite and unaffected. Souza had a reputation for ruthlessness inside the National Congress and was rumored to have many heavily armed friends outside of it. It would probably be best to mind his manners. "Of course you have to adapt to changing circumstances. And I agree," he conceded, because one always gave before demanding, "that the extraction-- given what you've told me-- would be unwise at the moment. But we do have a contract," Arthur said, "regardless of the circumstances."

The fingers on Souza's hand slid slightly to the left, still relaxed on the white linen tablecloth.

Arthur heard the quiet _hish_ of metal being pulled against nylon behind him, and resolutely did not turn around. "My team is here at significant personal risk," he said quietly. "There were other contracts we chose not to take-- contracts that would have paid very well for much less complex work-- because we had already accepted this one. We honor our agreements, Mr. Souza," he said, with a slight emphasis. "Honor yours. I expect my team to be paid the balance of our fee."

"Mr. Hammett," Souza drawled, glanced briefly towards the door, "I am afraid you are not in a position to make demands. Now," he said, standing up and carelessly dropping his napkin onto the table, "you will please stand,"-- a strong hand wrapped around his forearm, pulling Arthur to his feet-- "and I will have you delivered to your place of business. No, Mr. Hammett," the man continued, indulgent as Arthur tensed to fight, "you will not try to run, or make a scene-- no vulgar public displays, please. I'm afraid Vitor here is not the forgiving type," he said, sounding sincerely apologetic.

Arthur felt the implacable shove of a gun against his ribs, and decided against testing Vitor's mercy. The restaurant was nearly empty, and he doubted anyone would even bat an eye if Souza had him shot; Arthur wasn't the only one who knew Souza's reputation. "Why do this," he asked, his voice low and biting as they walked between tables, "why have us plan for weeks, come down here, set up shop, and then change your mind at the last minute?" Vitor's hand on his arm tightened painfully, pulling him out the restaurant doors. Souza followed, ignoring Arthur entirely.

Arthur kept pushing. "There isn't a job, is there." He didn't know why, but that was the answer. " _Fuck_ ," he said explosively, "there was never a job." Vitor shoved him roughly into the back of a black sedan with dark windows and Arthur's head hit the edge of the car with a sick dull _thud_ , enough force behind the blow to make pain spark up behind his eyes like flares. "God, _jesus_." The fingers on his right hand came away from his temple slick and red where the skin had split. "Why would you," he asked, his tongue thick and confused as the car peeled away from the curb. He thought he might be sick.

"Why wouldn't I?" replied Souza from the front passenger seat. He reached forward to switch on the radio. A woman was singing _ninguém me ama, ninguém me quer_ to a slow samba. "Eh," muttered Souza, disgusted. "Vitor," he said, reaching to tune the dial again, "do the honors, please," and Arthur didn't have time to duck before the gun crashed against the side of his face.

* * *

He woke in slow shards, first only aware of the pain, a pulsing, glowing presence in his head and stomach, and then, forcing himself to roll onto his side, desperately nauseated. He closed his eyes-- the light was sickening-- and breathed determinedly through his nose, trying not to vomit. Some uncounted number of breaths later, the bile receded, and he risked opening his eyes again.

His vision was blurry, especially in his left eye-- the left side of his face burned fiercely, felt hot and swollen and sticky with what he suspected was a not inconsiderable amount of blood-- but after blinking for a moment Arthur was able to identify his surroundings.

He was sprawled on the concrete floor of the workshop, a square of late afternoon sunlight falling heavily on his face through the filthy windows. There was broken glass near his elbow, and papers scattered across the floor--

Arthur pushed himself up, panicked and dizzy. His torso was impossibly painful, and his right leg buckled underneath him as he tried to stand, grabbing hold of the back of a chair that had been broken and tossed upside down. He managed to pull himself upright, somehow, breathing slowly and gripping the chair with white-knuckled hands. Now he could see that the entire workshop was trashed: Magda's mock-ups torn apart, pieces of a foam board cathedral scattered over the tables and floor, the chalk board kicked off its stand and broken, a coffee cup smashed onto the floor, the pieces surrounded by a cold milky puddle.

There was something dripping behind him, a soft, thick-sounding wet _plop_ onto the workshop's floor.

Arthur turned around slowly, already half-certain of what he would see.

Magda and Putcelli were in the lounge chairs, arms extended in relaxed supplication. The floor beneath them was a dark and glossy lake. Their throats had been slit while they dreamt.

Arthur felt himself go feverishly cold, sweating, the workshop narrowing to a pin-point, dark red and sticky. He crashed to his knees. "Oh god," he said, and then turned his head, doubling over to empty his stomach onto the already filthy floor. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Arthur panted, swallowing the bitter taste. "Okay," he said weakly, and then, more strongly, "okay. What do I." He didn't need to finish the question; no one was going to help him answer it.

He pulled himself back to his feet. That was first: he couldn't do anything, laying on the floor. "Calm the fuck down," he told himself sternly. "Think." He glanced back at Magda and Putcelli in their chairs, steeling himself for the dizzy jolt of nausea he knew would come. He tried to distance himself from the image: they could have been sleeping, if one ignored the wet red curtain blanketing their chests. They had probably never even woken up, had been in the middle of one of Magda's cities, walking the mazes when Souza's men had pressed blades to their unresisting throats.

The PASIV was missing, he realized with a start.

It should have been sitting on the plastic table between the two of them, the drip cords still pushing the useless dream agent into their stilled veins-- but there was nothing. Arthur inhaled roughly, and then thought with a desperate sort of relief, _I'm dreaming, none of this is real_ , and scrabbled for the die inside his vest pocket.

It wasn't there.

" _Shit_ ," he said, the bottom dropping out of his world. He pressed frantic hands to the hidden pockets, then searched the mundane pockets of his trousers; it wasn't there. His wallet and cellphone were gone as well, but that was inconsequential. He turned to look at the floor where he had been dumped, but the only splashes of red he found were the drops of his own blood.

"No," he said to no one, his voice dull. "I had it. I had it when I met with Souza at the restaurant, I rolled a two before he sat down, _I had it_." He took a few tentative steps, and leaned heavily against one of the tables. It creaked with his weight. _Do you remember how you got here_ , he thought, and closed his eyes.

"Souza had a job for us," he said to the empty workshop. Putcelli and Magda didn't count anymore; they weren't going to contradict his story. "I was in Toronto, flew to Brasilia to set things up. I've been here six weeks, Putcelli flew in last Friday, Magda got here on Sunday. Souza called this morning," he said, uncertain on this point-- he didn't think it had been more than a day, the blood on Putcelli's thin chest wasn't dry yet, "and he wanted to cancel the job. I met him at a restaurant downtown." He thought about the heavily-armed Vitor, the barrel of the gun undeniable at his ribs, and touched his right temple. It hurt, but not as badly as the left side of his face. "I hit my head on the door," Arthur continued, reciting the events like catechism. "There was music on the radio. Vitor hit me with the gun, and I blacked out and woke up here."

It sounded like it might be true. Arthur nodded to himself. The gap between Vitor striking him with the gun and waking up in the workshop was troubling, but without his totem it was the best he was going to be able to do. He looked back at the bodies of his coworkers. "I'm sorry," he told them, quiet. "This shouldn't have happened. I missed something. I should have seen this coming."

In the distance, Arthur thought he could hear the far off wail of police sirens. The nearest police station was seven, maybe eight minutes away if one took traffic and the narrow streets of this part of Taguatinga into consideration. He had a few moments to think.

"Right," Arthur said, and ignored the way the ground lurched up around his feet as he pushed away from the table. He needed to disappear, and quickly. He shouldn't go back to the apartment; Souza had likely found it by now, would tip the police in that direction when they didn't find him here. And he had Arthur's wallet, so he had photo ID, even if Grant Hammett didn't technically exist. It wasn't a good picture-- Arthur could work around that. The cellphone wasn't an issue, either, really; there was decent encryption on it, and Arthur was careful to delete his call history every day: no numbers stored, no names, no notes, no photos. The only thing Souza would get from the phone without some serious hacking was his own call that morning to cancel the contract.

Arthur looked around at the workshop, trying to remember if there was anything he needed to take with him or destroy before leaving, but his head was muzzy. Their names weren't on anything, at least, although there was enough DNA evidence on the floor to send a saint down for murder and it was pretty damn clear from the set up that a mind crime had been in the works. He made it to the office area-- it was equally well tossed-- and quickly pulled off his bloody vest and shirt. He had an extra button-up hanging on the back of the door. He grabbed it, and went into the dingy washroom next door.

Arthur didn't recognize the man looking out of the warped metal mirror over the sink. His face was badly swollen along his left cheekbone, sick discoloration already coming up underneath the caked blood. The cut on his right temple was less serious, but definitely noticeable. His torso was pockmarked with dark bruises the size of his fist; he prodded one gently, trying to feel if the ribs underneath were broken. Vitor or one of Souza's cronies must have kicked the hell out of him after he passed out. He hissed at the pressure, and decided to worry about it later. Nothing he could do about it now, anyway.

The water from the tap was rusty and warm, but he made an attempt at washing the blood from his face nevertheless. It didn't exactly improve his looks any, but it made him feel slightly more human. Wincing, he slid the clean shirt over his shoulders, pushing the buttons through their holes as quickly as his clumsy fingers would let him.

The sirens were getting closer.

"Okay," he said to his reflection. "Time to go." He walked back into the office, and grabbed Putcelli's hat and sunglasses from the desk. It was a stupid hat, a white straw panama with a black band, and Arthur had rolled his eyes whenever Putcelli put the damn thing on.

"You look like the guy at the end of _Silence of the Lambs_ in that," Arthur had told him the first time the hat made its appearance.

"Hannibal Lector had _style_ ," Putcelli said, tilting the brim to what he imagined was a rakish angle. "And you, my friend, are simply green with envy." Arthur never bothered to tell him he meant the other guy, the guy who was going to get eaten.

Arthur put on the panama and glasses, and pulled the brim low to hide his damaged face. He walked unsteadily to the back door of the workshop, glancing one final time at Magda and Putcelli. "I'm sorry," he told them again. He couldn't even cover their faces; the pool of blood was too large around them. He'd leave footprints. "I'll fix this," he promised lamely, and pushed the door to the back alley open and stepped outside.

* * *

It took him three hours to reach the bolt hole, walking slowly, unconcerned in the quickly-fading afternoon warmth, stopping to lean idly against the occasional building with his hands in his pockets to let his head clear. _People see what they expect_ , he remembered telling someone once, and didn't let himself hurry: a man loitering in the shade or stopping to read a torn poster on a telephone pole was unremarkable; a man clutching at his ribs as he ran, glancing backwards over his shoulder, might as well have a sign reading _Remember You Saw Me_ on his back.

The bolt hole was on the third story of an apartment building that looked like it had been built out of secondhand cement blocks and desperation. He had never been here before; he arranged the bolt holes through a third party, always-- this time, a pretty young woman with dark skin and curly hair. She had given the landlord the impression that she needed the room for the occasional after-hours appointment with her boss, and had pressed the key into his hand with a smirk after securing the lease.

"Obrigado," Arthur told her, and gave her a roll of cash in exchange. She had rolled her eyes and told him, in English that was far better than his Portuguese, that the lease was paid for the next three months.

"I put the bag where you asked," she said. "You should be careful, I think. Maybe you get a gun. My brother, he could get you a good one."

He shook his head. "I don't need one," he told her. "Thank you, though." He hesitated, then pulled an extra bill out of his wallet. "Forget this," he instructed, and handed her the money.

She smiled, and tucked the bill into her pocket with the rest. "You are already gone," she assured him, and melted into the crowd.

He _felt_ gone, he thought, holding tight to the railing on the stairs as he made his way to the rented room. The key, thankfully missed by Souza's men in their pickpocketing attempt, was warm in his hand. He stopped, panting quietly in front of the door. He put his hand on the doorknob, and pressed his ear against the scarred wood of the door to listen. Satisfied, he slid the key into the lock and turned it.

The room was bare, except for a narrow twin bed with a stained mattress pushed against the far wall. The door to the bathroom was falling off its hinges, and the lone window to his left was cracked and dirty. Arthur nodded, satisfied, shut the door behind him, and threw the lock. He took off the hat and sunglasses, and stripped out of his shirt and pants slowly, grimacing at the sharp spikes of pain the movement generated in his ribs.

He walked to the bathroom in his underwear and lifted the lid on the tank of the toilet. Inside, tangled up in the stopper chain, was the bag. He let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding, pulling the black rubberized case out of the cool water, and sat down on the rust-stained rim of the bathtub. He twisted the combination lock, and felt it click as the numbers keyed into place. The bag open, he dumped its contents onto the bathroom floor.

He had: a small zippered bank pouch containing three thousand euros, a handful of pre-loaded credit cards, and six passports, two of which were his; a pre-paid cellphone with an international SIM card; one of Magda's switchblades; a small first aid kit; and a length of duct tape rolled into a tight silver tube. He spared a moment's thought for the gun he'd turned down, then shook it off. He had what he had; there was no use wishing for impossibilities.

What he was sorely lacking was information, but he could fix that, if he were lucky. He picked up the cellphone, opening the battery casing reflexively to check for a tracker. The phone appeared clean. He paused for a moment, then keyed in a long string of numbers. It was somewhere around four in the afternoon on the west coast. Cobb should answer.

The phone rang twice before Arthur heard him pick up, saying, "This is Cobb," in a voice that was far away, in another world almost.

"I've got a problem," Arthur said, short. There was a television on in the background-- something with high-pitched funny voices. Cartoons. James must have commandeered the television.

"Hang on," Cobb told him, and Arthur could hear the scrape of something covering the mic. Cobb's hand, probably. There was a loud rustle again, and Cobb said, "How bad is it?" The television noises were gone.

"Bad," Arthur said, almost snickering at the severe fucking understatement. A broken leg was bad. This was something else entirely. "Putcelli and Magda are dead. The client wanted to cancel the contract, I wanted him to pay the balance. We met to talk about it. He had some muscle pull a gun and knock me out, and when I came to they were dead."

"Shit," said Cobb. "What else?"

Arthur closed his eyes. "They took the hardware," he said, dull, then swallowed. "Tossed the place. The police were on the way when I left. And my die is missing." His voice broke a little at the last.

"Do you remember how you got there?" Cobb demanded, and Arthur could almost see him pull the top out of his pocket and set it spinning.

"Yeah," Arthur said. "I think I do, anyway." He recounted what he knew to Cobb, starting with Souza contacting him in Canada, and ending with him getting to the bolt hole.

"Okay." Cobb exhaled heavily over the line. "Which ID are you using right now? Do you think you can stay where you are for a few hours while I dig around, or do you need to run?"

Arthur moved to rub his eyes in exhaustion, but stopped just short, recalling his aching cheek and bloody temple. "I was using Hammett," he told Cobb. "Souza doesn't have a reason to know any other handles, but he's not an idiot, he'll know that's not my name. And I don't know if I _can_ run, right now," Arthur said, too tired to be anything but honest, "at least, not until I get my head on straight. I need information, anyway," he reasoned, "before I do anything else. I don't know if my exit routes will hold-- the police will be all over the workshop by now, and Souza can plant my ID wherever the hell he wants."

"So you'll stay where you are for the moment," Cobb said, making up his mind. "I'm going to see what our friend in Mombasa can dig up, see if I can't find you a fire escape or something. I'll call back in two hours," he said. "Try to patch yourself up. Don't sleep, if you can help it," Cobb warned. "You've probably got a concussion."

"I figured that, thanks," Arthur said, wryly. The dizziness and nausea were rather unmistakable.

"If you don't answer when I call back," Cobb said, "I'm coming down there myself."

Arthur shook his head gingerly, forgetting Cobb couldn't see it. "No you won't," he said, dismissive. "You'd miss a soccer game or something. Get someone else," he said, sternly. "Just because I got the shit kicked out of me doesn't mean I don't remember you're out of the game, old man."

"Shut the fuck up," Cobb said, his voice almost amused over the line, and then, "You've got two hours. Don't die in the meantime."

Arthur listened to the empty dial tone for a moment before hitting _end_. Two hours wasn't much time, but if Cobb could get a hold of Yusuf, he might be able to figure out the _who_ s and _how_ s and _why_ s before Souza's men managed to track him down again. He was nowhere near home free, true, but now there was a plan. Arthur was good at details; he could think this through.

In the interim, he had a first aid kit and a shower, which-- a quick test showed-- dribbled like an incontinent bloodhound, but was better than nothing. He kicked the phone and bank pouch away from the tub-- there was no curtain, and he didn't want them getting wet-- but left Madga's switchblade within reach. Then he stood up, steadying himself against the wall, shucked his underwear, and climbed into the tub.

The water never got much more than lukewarm, and the pressure was non-existent, but that was fine by Arthur. As it was, his cuts stung painfully. He found a petrified sliver of soap stuck to a ledge and pried it up with his fingernails. He forced it into a weak lather, rubbing it over his head, grunting as the suds caught on the split skin of his face. He rinsed quickly, reluctant to let the water rattle through the pipes for too long-- this wasn't the sort of building where the neighbors would be overly concerned about noises coming from the usually silent apartment, but there was no sense in taking an unnecessary risk.

He stepped out of the tub and bent down to retrieve the little first aid kit, still naked. "Next time," he muttered, "I'm packing towels," and unzipped the little leather case. He pulled out a small chemical cold pack and the tube of super glue before glancing at the plastic vial containing a miniaturized pharmacy. There were a couple pills in there that would do the trick, he knew, but they would also make him sleepy and dull his brain even further. _Not an option,_ he thought, and shook out four or five plain ibuprofen. No aspirin, he remembered. Not until he was positive that Vitor's kicks to his chest and stomach hadn't caused the sort of bleeding he couldn't see.

Arthur swallowed the pills with a handful of metallic-tasting water, and then looked at himself in the mirror. He didn't look any better, but at least he was cleaner. He turn his head to the right, looking at the cuts on his face assessingly. There was a deep, nasty slice near the corner of his left eye and he didn't like the look of it. Probably needed stitches, but that wasn't going to happen. So: improvisation. He pulled an iodine wipe out of the kit, and cleaned the laceration carefully. Wincing in advance, he took the top off the super glue and gently pinched the swollen flesh together with one hand. Ignoring the accompanying lurch of pain, Arthur laid a bead of glue along the cut, careful to keep it from the raw flesh inside. He waited for one, two, five excruciating moments, and then took his fingers away. He repeated the procedure on a few other cuts that worried him, and then examined his handiwork in the smeared mirror.

"Better," he told his reflection. It wouldn't do anything to make his injuries any less apparent, but it would at least help the lacerations to heal a little more quickly, and maybe avoid infection, if he could keep them clean.

He was nearly dry, now, and pulled his underwear back on. He gathered the contents of the black rubber bag back together, keeping the phone and the switchblade loose in his hand as he went back into the main room of the apartment. He sat down on the bed's bare mattress, pushing himself backwards until his shoulders rested against the wall. He twisted the chemical cold pack in his hands, feeling the capsule break and the powder inside turn to a frozen slurry.

Arthur tilted his head back, and rested the ice pack on his injured cheek and eye. The cold made his face throb. He breathed slowly: _in_ two three four _out_ two three four _in_ two three four--

He woke up when the phone rang, shrill next to his thigh. Arthur fumbled for a moment, disoriented, and then found it.

"What have you got for me," he said, his voice indistinct and thick with sleep. The light had changed; it was maybe an hour after dark, judging from the glow of the sodium yellow lamps outside. The cold pack had left a damp spot on the mattress. He picked it up and pressed it back against his cheek. It was still cool to the touch.

"You shouldn't be sleeping," Cobb chastised. He was outside, somewhere. Voices carried differently on the phone when you were outside.

"Didn't mean to," Arthur replied. "Anyway, I'm not dead yet, so it doesn't seem to have hurt me."

"Fair enough," Cobb conceded, and cleared his throat. "Here's what I know," he said. "Our friend tells me that he doesn't have anything definite about Souza by name, but that he's heard some very nasty rumors about a politician matching his description from that corner of the world."

"Such as?"

"This and that," Cobb said, evasively. "Look, our friend should tell you about it himself, because I can't make heads or tails of it right now. I don't know what you've got yourself into," he said, grave, "but it is the textbook definition of not good. You need to get out of the neighborhood."

Arthur sighed. Cobb had found out something, he was certain, but had decided not to share with the rest of the class for some inscrutable Cobb-like reason. "Helpful," he observed. "Did you have better luck with the fire escape?"

Cobb hummed in assent. "Our friend seems to think he has a courier in your area who wouldn't be averse. Grey van, northern tags, broken radio antenna. He can get you as far as São Paulo, and I've got a lead on someone to help get you out of the country from there."

"Do I get names?" Arthur asked. He'd like to know who he was going to have to rely on, if only so he knew in advance how corruptible they were likely to be.

"You do not," Cobb replied with finality. "Our friend says your ride will be approaching in about five hours, so you can go back to sleep, if you think it's safe. He'll want some money for his services," Cobb said. "A couple thousand, he thought. Not more than that."

"I've got it," Arthur assured him.

"Good," said Cobb. There was a pause, and Arthur could hear a kid in the background-- James, maybe?-- shouting. "Keep the phone on you," Cobb said, abruptly. "I'll try to let you know as soon as I have anything useful."

"Right," Arthur said. "Cobb," he said, embarrassed at how his voice thickened. "I-- thanks."

Cobb made a dismissive sound in his throat. "This is the very least I can do," he said, "and you know it."

"Still," Arthur said.

"Still nothing," Cobb argued. He sighed. "Five hours, okay? Be looking for the van; he won't wait for you."

"Got it," Arthur said, and waited until Cobb hung up again. He tapped the phone against his thigh, idly, trying to decide what else needed to be done. His pants, he decided finally-- there was blood on them from the workshop. He should try to rinse them out a little, enough so that the spots weren't obviously bloodstains.

He slid off the mattress, stiff and aching, but in considerably less pain than he had expected and made his way to the bathroom, trousers in hand. He didn't bother to soak the them in the tub-- he just scrubbed at them roughly in the sink until the water came away mostly clear. He squeezed them until they were merely damp, and then shook the wrinkles out, hanging them over the foot of the bed to dry. Then he set the alarm on the phone, swallowed a couple more pills, and lay down on the filthy mattress. He was asleep within seconds.

* * *

The drive to São Paulo was endless. Yusuf's courier, when he arrived, was a gaunt man in his middle fifties, taciturn and disapproving. When Arthur had climbed into the passenger seat, grunting with effort despite the attempt he'd made at taping his ribs up with duct tape, the man had watched silently.

"Two thousand," he told Arthur, once he had managed to close the door. "You don' talk. We get stopped, you are hitchhiking. I don' know you, yeah? I don' help you." The man met Arthur's eyes dispassionately, taking in his bruised face, the swollen eye, the way Arthur held himself stiffly in the van's seat. "You don' die, neither, cabrão," he informed him. "Got no room for bodies."

"Duly noted," Arthur agreed, and handed the man a thousand euros. "The other half when we get there," he said, and his driver nodded curtly, easing the van down the darkened streets, turning south and away from the planned sprawl of the Federal District.

That had been sixteen, probably seventeen hours ago, and Arthur was miserable, gritting his teeth at every lurch, every sway of the van as they rumbled down yet another gravel road. The duct tape around his ribs pulled and itched, and he was sweating like a jockey trying to make weight before a race. Yusuf's contact seemed tireless, and had stopped only four times during the trip, pausing to fill the van with ethanol and smoke three or four cigarettes at a go. The first time, Arthur had unfolded himself from his seat and gone to the bathroom, unspeakably relieved when his piss appeared clear of blood. After the second stop-- it was somewhere near noon, and they were well south of Minas Gerais-- Arthur realized that he hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before, and that he'd left on the floor of the workshop. He bought a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in wax paper the next time they pulled over, tearing off small pieces of the stale bread and meat and eating slowly, pleasantly surprised when it all stayed down.

The sun was getting low on the horizon again when the driver finally cleared his throat. "Almost there," he grunted. "Forty minutes, hour with traffic." Arthur glanced out the window; the outlying ramshackle towns had long since merged into a constant stream of dense urban sprawl. "Where'm I dropping you," the man asked, supremely incurious.

"Give me a minute," Arthur said, and pulled the cellphone out of his pocket. _eta sp ~1hr_ , he keyed in. _where to?_ He hit send, and waited for Cobb's reply. It came almost immediately.

 _Pinacoteca do Estado @ 7:30. Courtyard ground level near elev._

Arthur relayed this information to his driver, who nodded, and proceeded to ignore him. Arthur looked back at the phone, and wrote _anything else i should know?_ The more information he had before the meet, the better.

Cobb must have thought about it for a moment before responding, because it took a minute or two before Arthur had his reply. _Be nice_ , it read. _They didn't have to do this_. Which meant that Arthur was not going to like whoever Cobb had sent. Lionel, maybe, or that woman from Mexico City who reminded him of the Hindu goddess of destruction. Or-- jesus, Cobb wouldn't have sent _Eames_ , would he?

 _if eames going to kill him, then you_ , he scowled. He'd rather deal with Souza on his own than listen to whatever smart remarks Eames had about his handling of the situation.

 _Say thank you, Arthur_ , Cobb responded.

 _thank you arthur_. He was feeling juvenile and petty. Long car rides and getting beat up by thugs who murdered his coworkers plus the prospect of Eames in his immediate future did this to him.

 _Ass_ , Cobb texted back. _Good luck._

 _thanks. say hi to small fry ok?_ He tapped out the last message, then slid the phone back into his pocket.

He flipped down the passenger side sun-shade, checking his reflection in the mirror on the reverse side. Not pretty. Beyond the obvious cuts and bruises, he looked tired and a little feverish. His hair, usually slicked back, was greasy and kept falling into his face. Actually, that might help to hide some of the worst damage-- and he still had Putcelli's hat and sunglasses, although he was reluctant to wear the hat, especially inside a museum. It was too recognizable. He might be able to get away with the glasses. Plenty of people wore sunglasses inside, especially if they had headaches.

Arthur chewed on his lower lip. His shirt was pretty crumpled, and his trousers still had a few obvious stains on them, particularly on the hip. He could be a student of some sort, maybe; he didn't think he looked too old. A graduate student, then. He nodded to himself, then unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves, rolling them up to the elbows. He undid an extra button at his collar, then pulled the tails of his shirt out of his trousers, trying to smooth out the creases a little. He ran his hand through his hair, trying to make it look like he'd maybe been up studying or drinking all night and just couldn't be bothered with hygiene at the moment.

He slid Putcelli's aviators on gingerly, checking his reflection. Not great, he decided, but if he played it right, no one should pay too much attention. He wished he had a notebook or something to do with his hands, but he could always pull out the phone and pretend to text-- it would give him a reason to linger in the courtyard while he waited for his contact. He reached awkwardly behind himself, tucking the switchblade between the black bag he had taped to his back and his skin; he'd decide what to do about it when he figured out if there were metal detectors or not.

Arthur watched the city unfold around him; he'd been to Rio several times for business, but never São Paulo. In some other situation, it might be a place he would want to explore: nondescript office buildings and ultra-modernist apartment buildings punctuated by enormous mirrored skyscrapers, and the occasional colonial remnant from Portugal sandwiched in between. The city was an appealing mixture of the very old and the very new, glossed over by a sort of charmingly unrepentant arrogance that Arthur rather liked.

Traffic was appalling, and Yusuf's courier, who had until this point driven in a somewhat meditative state of zen, was gripping the steering wheel with iron hands and cursing under his breath. Crossing the street-- even when pedestrians had the right-of-way-- appeared to be a live-action game of Frogger, Arthur noted.

São Paulo was quite possibly the perfect place, if one needed to disappear in a hurry. Arthur felt one of the knots of worry inside his chest loosen very slightly.

"Coming up," his driver said, and Arthur saw they had turned onto a quieter street while he had been lost in his thoughts. They were passing a park on Arthur's side. Yusuf's courier pulled over at the curb, tapping a thin finger against the glass of his window, indicating an old museum with lush gardens. "That it," he told Arthur, and held out his hand.

"Thanks," Arthur said, and put the second thousand, plus an extra two hundred fifty, into the man's palm. "I appreciate it."

The man curled his hand around the cash and nodded. "Careful," he told Arthur, jerking his head towards the museum, a sun-bleached, column-studded red brick building from the turn of the century. "Got no room for bodies, remember."

Arthur was surprised to feel himself smile for the first time in more than thirty-six hours. "I'll remember," he said, and got out of the van.

* * *

The museum courtyard was spectacular: the worn classical facade was enclosed by a gridded glass ceiling which cast a shadow-made chess board onto the polished cement floor below. The original window casings had been removed, and the restoration architect had replaced them with panes of flat glass that went from floor to ceiling. Modern industrial metal walkways crossed the space twenty and forty feet in the air, connected by the bare outlines of an elevator. It was breathtaking-- clean and open and laden with the echo of stripped-down history.

There was a carved totem pole in the middle of the empty space.

Arthur snorted when he saw it. He wondered if Cobb had picked the meeting point, or if his contact had. Whoever it was, they had an excellent feel for the inappropriately symbolic.

He had picked up a brochure on the museum on his way in, and settled himself down on one of the benches to wait for his contact; he was about ten minutes early. He busied himself reviewing the glossy booklet with one eye while keeping the other on the figures milling around him. No one had caught his eye just yet, and Cobb hadn't told him to look for any particular sign, which meant that Arthur would likely recognize whoever his contact on sight.

According to the brochure, the Pinacoteca had a few works by Francis Bacon in an upstairs gallery, including _Study for the Head of George Dyer_. Nice. Too bad he didn't have the time to go take a look; Bacon had always been one of his favorites, perhaps because Margaret Thatcher had once described him as "that man who paints those dreadful pictures." So few people appreciated surrealism.

"You haven't been waiting long, have you?" a familiar voice asked him. Arthur looked up, disbelieving. "I tried to hurry. Traffic was awful."

She looked-- wonderful. Unchanged.

He was going to strangle Cobb.

"I just got here," he heard himself tell her, and stood up. He grimaced, seeing her eyes widen as she took in his face behind the sunglasses. "It's nothing," he said, low, waving away her look of concern. "Ignore it, it doesn't matter, I'm fine. What are we doing?"

Her eyes narrowed, clearly not believing him, but she didn't press the point. "I've got a hotel. It's safe," she told him, and offered him her hand. He took it, and she led him slowly out of the courtyard, keeping the distance between them at a minimum. "We'll talk about the rest when we get there," she said, and paused. They stopped in front of a large bronze, a laurel tree in flight.

"It's good to see you again," she told him, quiet, not meeting his eyes.

"Ariadne," he began, feeling more tired than he ever had in his life, "you don't have to do this."

"No," she said, and surprised him by leaning up to press a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. "No, I don't," she agreed, and then tugged lightly on his arm. "Come on," she told him. "We need to get going."

He followed.


	2. Chapter 2

**  
_Part Two._   
**

* * *

**São Paulo, Brazil.  
18.09.14**

He had thought, perhaps, that she would have picked someplace innocuous: a cheap room by the airport, or a hostel, somewhere. An anonymous sort of place. But the taxi turned off the wide avenue near the river and onto the long manicured drive of toward a towering glass box hotel instead, the sort of place that hummed-- a low, harmonious tone-- with class. At any other moment, he would have been pleased-- but right now, fewer than thirty hours removed from a double murder and sour with sweat, he wasn't sure he was appropriately dressed for the drunk tank in the city jail. People would notice.

"This isn't low-profile," he said, tensing beside her. "Ariadne--"

"Quiet," she instructed, softly, eying the cab driver. He was ignoring them, bopping his head along to the radio. "And don't call me that when we get in. The room's in my name, which is Sara Webb at the moment. I checked in at two this afternoon, and made a big deal about the fact that my boyfriend hadn't met me at the airport like he promised he would."

"That would be me," Arthur guessed. Webb was one of the three aliases Cobb had had him create for her during the Fischer job; unless Ariadne had used it in the last two years, it ought to be clean. He didn't think she had. Miles said she hadn't taken a job since the last one they'd worked together.

"That would be you," she agreed. "Your first name's Neil, by the way-- I didn't mention a last name. The guy at the front desk was very concerned, and had a car drop me off at the U.S. Embassy around three this afternoon."

Arthur relaxed a little; it wasn't a bad story, actually. And this sort of hotel was discreet, with relatively decent security-- not to mention room service. God, _room service_. "So I was mugged, maybe."

"Probably the easiest thing," she agreed. "It would explain why you're hurt, and why you don't have any bags." The taxi slowed, pulling up to the entrance. A porter wearing a sharp black suit stepped towards the cab, intent on opening the door. Ariadne reached down and squeezed his hand. "You're going to have to act like you want to be around me," she said, looking out her window, away from him. "At least a little bit."

Arthur nodded jerkily. "Of course," he said, his voice rough. That-- really was not the problem. The porter opened his door, and Arthur moved to slide out. Ariadne opened her own door, and ran quickly around the back of the cab to lend him her hand.

"We've got this all backwards," Arthur said, trying to joke for the benefit of the porter. It felt a little stiff. "I'm supposed to help _you_ out of cars."

Ariadne shook her head at him and smiled, her smile impossibly fond. It made him lightheaded. "Do you think you can manage to not fall over while I pay the driver?" she teased. She handed the cab driver what had to be at least twice the fare, then came and slid her hand into his, pulling him through the revolving doors.

The hotel lobby was spotlessly shiny and minimalist, the way the inside of an egg might look if it had been designed by Buckminster Fuller and executed by Apple. Arthur experienced a moment of intense longing for a good three-piece suit and clean underwear as he caught his messy reflection in a long mirrored wall.

"Miss Webb, good evening!" A dark-haired man hailed them from behind the pale curve of the front desk, and Ariadne squeezed Arthur's fingers. "I see you have recovered your lost property."

"I have," Ariadne answered, sounding relieved. "Neil's a little worse for wear, but it could have been a whole lot worse."

"I'm not complaining," Arthur said, gingerly wrapping an arm around her waist. "I'll just be glad take a shower and _sleep_ ," he said wryly. The truth was always a good lie.

The clerk looked at Arthur with concern. "We have a doctor on staff, Mr. --"

"Charles." Arthur filled in the blank, and offered the clerk his hand. He had clean ID for the last name, if nothing else. Neil could be a nickname. "Neil Charles. Thank you for helping Sara this afternoon, by the way. She said you guys were great."

The clerk stood a little taller, puffing his chest out like a pigeon. "It was our very great pleasure," he assured Arthur. "Mr. Charles, we do have a doctor on staff-- if you like, I could have him visit Miss Webb's room."

Arthur shook his head. "I'm fine," he assured the clerk, but Ariadne interrupted.

"You are not, and you know it. You just don't want to hear someone tell you to go home and cancel the rest of the trip," she scolded. She turned to the clerk. "Would you mind sending up some first aid supplies? Ice and and some compression bandages, stuff like that?"

The clerk beamed, pleased to be of use. "Of course, Miss Webb. I'll have them sent up immediately."

Ariadne thanked him politely, and directed Arthur to the elevators. Once the doors shut behind them, Arthur cleared his throat. "You're very good at this," he told her, staring absently at the glowing numbers above the doors.

"Thank you," she said, her body still and quiet under the pressure of his arm. "I learned from the best." The doors chimed open, and she slid away from his grasp.

The room was at the end of the hallway, near the emergency stairs. They were the sort that locked from the inside: good for a quick escape, although the alarm would be a problem if they had to use them.

Once she had unlocked it, Ariadne pushed the door open a few inches, nodded, and then opened it the rest of the way. "I tied a hair across the door frame before I left this afternoon," she explained, waving Arthur into the room. "It hadn't been snapped, so we should be okay."

"Good idea," Arthur said, impressed. The curtains were pulled tightly across the windows, too; no chance of anyone seeing them enter the room from outside. She wouldn't have thought of that, two or three years ago. He wasn't sure if he liked the fact that she thought of it now or not.

The room was his kind of place: crisply contemporary with lots of clean lines and dark wood. It felt, he noticed with a start, not dissimilar to the hotel Ariadne had made for the Fischer job, and his hand went reflexively to his chest before he could remember that his totem was gone.

"Arthur," Ariadne said, and he realized that she had been calling his name for some time.

He shook his head. "Sorry," he said. "Sorry. I don't know. I think-- I'm just having some reality problems right now." He cleared his throat. "My totem's missing," he explained.

"Cobb said." Ariadne looked grave. Her hand went to her hip, and she pulled her little brass chess piece out of her pocket, hefting its weight in her palm. "This is real for me," she told him, "if that helps."

It did, and it didn't. There had been other Ariadnes in other places well before this, and they had told him similar things. But he appreciated the gesture. "Thanks," he told her. "For all of this. I mean it," he said.

Ariadne nodded, then shrugged. "I was in the neighborhood," she said, smiling awkwardly. "It seemed rude not to drop by."

"In the neighborhood?" He hadn't known she was in Brazil; Miles had said she would be finishing her dissertation this year. He assumed she'd be in Paris, or the States. If he'd known she was going to be nearby, he probably wouldn't have taken the job in the first place.

"Buenos Aires, actually," she explained. "It's a big neighborhood. I got a grant in July, thought I could add a quick chapter on urban planning and populism in South America." She laughed a little and said, "I'd actually planned to go to Brasilia in a couple of weeks," and Arthur went hot, then cold.

"You're not going," he said, and reached out to grab hold of her forearm, tight lipped. Unbidden, the workshop swam in front of his eyes, Magda and Putcelli's still bodies replaced by Ariadne's, the length of her pale neck bisected by a gaping red slice. "You are _not going_ , goddammit," he heard himself repeat, desperate. "You're going to get as far from this place as you fucking can, do you understand me?"

"Let go of my arm," she told him, pulling against his grip. " _Arthur_ ," she hissed, yanking harder. "Let go of me, _now_." He did, and felt sick as his vision zeroed in on the red imprint his fingers left behind on her narrow wrist. Ariadne rubbed at the marks, then stared up at him, bewildered. Her face was strangely distant.

"Arthur," she said, her brows drawing together. He felt very odd. "Sit down on the bed before you fall over, Arthur," she told him, and the room was filled with a loud white noise. He sat, heavily. He seemed to be having a hard time breathing, and his vision was greying out a little around the edges. He felt himself sway forward on the bed and thought, surprised, _I'm going to black out, now_.

"Shit," someone said, and there were hands pushing him to lay down, pulling his legs up onto the mattress. "Deep breaths, Arthur," Ariadne told him. "Slowly. It's okay, you're fine." Arthur closed his eyes for a moment, and then there was something damp and cool on his forehead and wrists.

"Sorry," he muttered a few minutes later, feeling groggy and painfully embarrassed. Ariadne was sitting on the bed next to him, watching his face like a hawk.

"Your lips went grey," she observed. "Have you been doing that often?"

"Doing what?" he asked. The room was still swaying gently around him, like a hammock in the breeze on a Caribbean island. "Passing out for no reason?"

"Yeah, that."

A drip of water from the washcloth on his forehead fell into his eye, and he brushed it away in frustration. "Not so much, no," he told her. "I'm not sure if I fell asleep or passed out after I called Cobb the first time, but I haven't done anything like that since." There was a soft knock on the door, and he struggled to sit up.

"Don't move," Ariadne said, sharp. "You stay where you are. It's just the porter with the first aid stuff."

Arthur stayed where he was, listening to the change in Ariadne's voice as she spoke to whoever it was behind the door. "Oh, _thank_ you," she said, her voice bright and grateful. She sounded younger, all of the sudden, and he wondered if this was what she would have sounded like if Miles had never mentioned her name to Cobb, if Arthur had been smart enough to keep his distance from the beginning.

Somewhere over his shoulder, Ariadne shut the door and locked it.

"Let's see what they sent us," she said, coming back into view with an enormous round basket of black wicker. It was piled high in an artful cascade of Ace bandages and cold packs and small tubs of mysterious creams and ointments. Ariadne picked one up, examining the label. "This would probably work better if I could read Portuguese at all," she said, and unscrewed the top. She took a quick sniff and wrinkled her nose.

"Bad?" he asked, and took the washcloth off his forehead. He thought he could probably sit up, if he did it slowly.

Ariadne shook her head. "I think it's just witch hazel or something," she said. "It smells like my dad's medicine cabinet." She offered him her hand, and helped him sit up. "I was going to suggest you take a shower before we do any of this," she said, gesturing to the basket of medical supplies, "but I don't want you passing out in there and hitting your head."

Arthur shook his head. "I'll be fine," he told her. "I just-- freaked out for a minute. Panic attack, maybe," he said. Then, lower, "I didn't mean to hurt you, before. I'm sorry."

Ariadne's mouth tightened, and she looked down at her wrist. The marks were fading, but still apparent. "It's--" she started, then stopped. "I was going to say, _it's okay_ , but it's really not, is it."

Arthur swallowed and shook his head. "No," he said, mouth dry. "I hurt you. That's not okay."

Ariadne sighed. There were twin blue shadows along the thin skin under her eyes, the way she got when she hadn't been sleeping. "I don't know what to tell you," she said, "I assume that wasn't exactly a voluntary reaction on your part. But whatever else is going on in your head right now-- and I'm guessing that it's not good-- you need to trust me to make safe decisions. I'm _not_ going to Brasilia," she told him, and he felt relief bubble up from deep inside him. "But I think you already knew that, because I'm not an idiot and neither are you," Ariadne continued. "I know if Souza's looking for you, and if he digs deep enough he might make the connection to me and I have no desire to walk into his backyard.

"But you're not calling the shots on this one, Arthur," she told him. "Not right now. Right now, you have to believe that I'm smart and capable enough to do what needs to be done to get you out of here and somewhere safe, and that means that you have _got_ to stop thinking I'm going to break just because things are ugly. I haven't yet," she said, with a bitter twist of humor. "And you know there have been times when I've had plenty of cause. So no more of this master of the universe shit, okay?" she said. "If you need help, ask for it. If there's something wrong, _tell me_. I don't want to walk into another trigger, okay?"

Arthur nodded. "I'm sorry," he repeated, for lack of anything more useful to say. "You're right. I'll try to remember that." Ariadne put her hand on top of his, wrapping her fingers into his palm. He squeezed them gently, trying to put his fear and guilt and trust into the gesture.

Ariadne squeezed back. "I've always hated Niemeyer, anyway," she said, a smile at the corner of her mouth. "And Lúcio Costa's urban planning is a hot mess. I can skip Brasilia."

"Modernists," he agreed, feeling a little shaken. "It's a lot of poured concrete and elegant monotony."

"Simone de Beauvoir would be very proud of us," she said, and he smiled a little, because somehow they had stepped away from the cliff and she was still beside him. Amazing. "Now," Ariadne said, clearing her throat. "What do you want? Food? Shower? Meds? Sleep?"

"All of the above," he told her. "Plus a plan to get out of the country and into some clean clothes. But a shower first," he said. At her uncertain look, he said, "I'll sit on the floor if it'll make you happy, but I've been in a van for most of the last day and I would kill for a change of underwear. I'm taking a shower."

"Nice," she said. "I needed to know that."

"You did," he agreed. Arthur moved to stand up, and grimaced as he felt the pull of his improvised taping job against his torso. "Actually, I might need your help with something before I can do that," he said, sheepishly.

"What?" she asked.

Arthur undid a few buttons on his shirt, enough to show her the silver tape beneath.

Ariadne raised her eyebrows. "That is going to hurt like a bitch coming off," she said, and he couldn't have agreed more.

* * *

Ariadne called Cobb while Arthur was in the shower, gingerly trying to scrub off the remnants of the tape's adhesive. She had wrinkled her forehead at the bruises on his abdomen, and made him leave the door open so she could hear if he called out, or slipped.

"The shower's glass, Ariadne," Arthur had pointed out, feeling like a prude. "It's opposite the door."

Ariadne looked up from the room service menu she had been studying. "Yes, and?" she said, distracted. The menu was seven pages long and didn't include prices. "I've seen you naked before, Arthur. You just did a fantastic imitation of a swooning debutant, you're not closing the door." She turned the menu over. "They've got paella with quinoa-- I think I might have that. What do you want?"

Arthur wanted to grit his teeth, but his jaw ached too badly. Swooning debutant, his ass. "Soup," he said shortly, and stalked into the bathroom.

A good twenty minutes later, he heard her tell Cobb, "No, really, he looks okay," as he turned off the water. The hot spray had stung, but his shoulders were looser than they had been in ages. He felt at least fifty percent closer to human. "Not great, his face is pretty banged up," Ariadne's voice continued, "but I think we can avoid a doctor." He pulled a folded robe from the shelf next to the glass shower stall and slid it on: a ridiculously plush white thing with the hotel's monogram embroidered on the lapel. Still, it was clean and soft and he couldn't stomach putting his clothes back on.

"No," Ariadne was saying as he came out of the bathroom, sitting cross-legged on the bed in the middle of the white duvet, "A couple cracked ribs, maybe, but he's-- wait, Cobb, he just came in," she said. "Let me ask him." She cupped her palm around the phone's mic so Cobb couldn't hear and said, "Sorry, he's worried about you. I'm supposed to ask if you're bleeding internally." She shrugged. "Since neither of us are medical professionals, I have no idea how we'd tell, but I'm taking the fact that you're not dead yet to be a good sign."

Arthur smiled. "So am I," he told her. Then, more seriously, "Tell him I think I should be okay," he said. "I'm not guzzling water, and there's no blood in my urine or anything. And aside from the workshop and whatever _that_ was earlier," he gestured to the bed, still embarrassed, "I haven't lost consciousness. But I think you're right about the ribs," he said, twisting slowly to his right and grimacing. Without the tape around his rib cage for stability, the ache in his chest was bright and constant, especially when he took a deep breath. "At least one or two of them on my left side are cracked."

Ariadne relayed the information to Cobb. "No, I know," she said in response to whatever Cobb said. "It seems sloppy to me."

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Care to include me in the conversation?"

"Cobb was just saying he thought it was strange that Souza didn't have you killed after they knocked you out," she told him. "I think he's right. He could have killed you, it wouldn't have been difficult--"

"Yes," Arthur said, "let's dwell on that, shall we. My finest hour." He really didn't want to think about it.

Ariadne rolled her eyes. "They had guns, you were unconscious, I'm not calling your masculinity into question. Souza could have killed you," she continued. "But he _didn't_. Which could mean that they didn't have time, or that they thought you'd die from what they _did_ do-- but that seems sloppy-- or," she concluded, "Souza wanted you hurt, not dead. At least not then," she added, thoughtful.

"Here," she said, shaking her head. She pushed the cellphone into Arthur's hands. "We can think about that later. You and Cobb should talk. I'm going to call down to the front desk and see if they have any clothes you can use until we find something better."

"Thanks." Arthur took the phone. "I don't think this is my best look."

"White and fuzzy doesn't do much for you, no," she agreed. She moved to pick up the house phone on the bedside table. "Talk to Cobb. The police in Brasilia picked up your wallet and it's making him nervous."

"Of course they did. It never just fucking rains," Arthur muttered, and walked across the room to sit at the desk. "Hey," he said to Cobb, voice low. Ariadne had picked up the receiver and was chattering brightly in her Sara Webb voice to someone in the lobby. "I'm going to kill you for dragging her into this, you realize."

"Hi, Arthur. I'm glad you're still not dead," Cobb said conversationally. Then, matching Arthur's tone, "She was closest to you, able to get to you fastest. And she deserved to know."

"She deserves not to get her throat slit for helping me."

Cobb hummed in agreement. "True," he said. "But I didn't call to ask her to help, Arthur; I thought she was still in Paris. I wanted to know if she knew anyone outside the game, someone who could let you hole up for a while before we found you a way out. She said she could do me one better, and get you herself. And Ariadne is good at seeing her way through a mess," Cobb said. "We both know that. She can do this."

"Yeah." Arthur said, thickly. "I know she can." He didn't doubt Ariadne's abilities. He had a hell of a lot of other doubts, but not about Ariadne's abilities.

"I know the two of you had a falling out," Cobb began.

"It's fine," Arthur said automatically. "It was a while ago. We can deal."

"Right." Cobb sounded unconvinced, but willing to let it go for the moment. "Now. As far as Yusuf can tell, Souza's dropped your wallet for the local PD, because there's a little chatter about a Grant Hammett in connection with a mind crime on the wires right now. That one's Canada, right?" Cobb asked.

"Yeah," Arthur said, thinking regretfully about the loft in Toronto. He'd probably have to ditch it, which was a crying shame. The Indian place around the corner from it did an amazing vindaloo. "Are they linking Hammett to the murders?"

"No," Cobb answered, sounding annoyed. "Which makes me think that Souza's crossing some palms with silver, because that would be the obvious connection, wouldn't it? Two dead bodies, an ID supposedly found on the scene-- even the worst cops should be asking that question. But they're not yet, at least not in public."

"How far is the signal going?" Arthur wanted to know.

"The chatter's strictly local right now," Cobb told him, "so I still think you've got another thirty-six hours or so before getting you out is a real problem. If Yusuf hears anything through Interpol or whatever, though, it could get a little tricky."

"Right," Arthur said. He'd only worked a total of four jobs-- five counting this clusterfuck-- as Hammett, so there shouldn't be too much for Interpol to dig up, but he started a countdown clock in his head all the same. "Have you heard anything about the PASIV?" Arthur asked. "The grapevine should be all over something like that."

Cobb hummed over the line. "I know," he said. "But the hardware hasn't come back onto the market, according to Yusuf, so either Souza's still got the PASIV or he's dumped it somewhere."

Arthur narrowed his eyes. "An expensive item to just dump," he said. "And I'd swear that none of the guys I saw with Souza were players. They didn't have the look. I can't see Souza taking the PASIV for personal use, either," he said slowly. He thought back to the ravaged workshop, steering his thoughts away from the bodies lying prone in their lounge chairs. The papers scattered on the floor, Magda's models torn apart but still recognizable, the broken chalk board--

The chalk board, with an outline of the target's schedule and possible points of entry still legible on it. It would be child's play to put the pieces back together, to come up with the name.

"Souza doesn't want me picked up for the murders-- that was something else," Arthur said, nodding to himself. He wasn't sure why, but that felt right. "He wanted there to have been a clear attempt at extraction against the target, and he wanted it to be obvious who the target was."

"What was the name?"

"Martim Goullard das Chagas," Arthur said, absently. Ariadne had finished her conversation with the concierge, and came to lean against the desk, listening intently to Arthur's side of the conversation. "One of Souza's rivals in the Chamber of Deputies-- political boss out of Acre, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee. Not a nice guy. Souza thought he was being paid off by someone to block some pieces of legislation. We were supposed to extract the name of the group or person paying him."

"Is it common knowledge that Souza and this guy are rivals?" Cobb asked.

"Yes," Arthur said, decisively. "It's part of the reason I wasn't sure we should take the job in the first place. They had a pretty well-documented screaming match outside the National Congress last spring," he said. "Made the papers and national news. I talked about it with Magda and Putcelli, though, and we decided that we could use the animosity in the dream."

Ariadne was shaking her head next to him, disapproving. "That's not like you. If the target was antagonistic in the dream his projections would have been twice as suspicious and the dream even more unstable," she said. "You know that's a bad risk; you taught _me_ that. Why would you take the chance?"

 _Magda_ , Arthur mouthed at Ariadne. She shook her head, not understanding-- but Cobb was talking again, asking, "So why the hell would Souza sabotage an extraction against his rival, when the first thing anyone intelligent is going to do is suspect that he's the guy who funded the job?"

"I have no idea." Arthur closed his eyes. There was a headache building deep in his skull, ready to let loose, and he was hungrier than he had realized. "While we're asking questions with no answers," he said, tired, "why didn't Souza kill me? And why the _fuck_ did he take my totem? It's not worth a damn thing to him," he said. "He shouldn't even know what a totem _is_."

Cobb exhaled, faint and static-y over the line. "I don't know," he said. "Look. Get some rest," he told Arthur. "I think you're probably safe for a day, maybe two. I'll keep working on things on my end, and you and Ariadne can figure out your exit route."

"Yeah, sure. Sounds good," Arthur said. He glanced over at Ariadne. "Want to say anything to Ariadne before I let you go?"

"Tell her I won't blame her if she suffocates you with a pillow."

"Nice to know you've got my back," Arthur said, annoyed. "We'll talk to you later, all right?"

Cobb chuckled. "Yeah," he said. "Tell her good night for me. I'll talk to you tomorrow," he said, and hung up.

Arthur put the phone down. "Cobb says good night," he told Ariadne, and she smiled at him, still leaning against the desk beside him.

He had been wrong when he had thought her unchanged, Arthur realized, studying her for a moment. She was still Ariadne, still wide-eyed and herself in all the ways that had ever mattered, but she was sharper, too, pared down and more certain in her movements. There were sketches of lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that hadn't been there two years ago, the faint intentions of time making their presence known on her face. He'd missed their gradual appearance, he thought. Like going to sleep in the dark and waking up after noon, missing all the subtleties and transitions of daybreak.

"You're looking at me." Her head tilted, curious. "Why?"

Arthur shook his head and laughed a little, a choked-off sort of sound. "I missed you," he said, not really sure why it was so important to tell her that. "So fucking much."

Ariadne didn't move, her face set like a bone mask. "You didn't come back," she said after a moment, and he didn't know if it was a judgement or denial or what. "You always had before, so I waited. I didn't realize you weren't coming back until Miles told me you were working in Mumbai two months later. He thought I must have turned the job down or something." Her face was stony. "It was more than a little humiliating."

Arthur nodded. He'd known that she would wait. It was one of the guilty aches he hadn't been able to ignore in the months that followed. He tried to explain. "I-- that last job," he said, remembering her face, flushed and bright-eyed, excited, as they had ducked around a corner to hide from their very angry, very awake, very armed mark. "It was too close. I couldn't stop thinking about it," he told her. He looked up, meeting her eyes. She deserved that from him. "I couldn't handle it. And once I was gone," he said, trying not to notice the way she flinched at that-- she always did give everything away with her eyes-- "there was momentum."

"Momentum." Ariadne's lips tightened. "Explain that, please."

Arthur traced a maze on the surface of the desk with a finger for moment before answering. "It was easier," he said, quiet, "just to stay gone, than it was to try and come back."

Ariadne bit at the corner of her lower lip, the way she did when she was debating what she wanted to say. _Why?_ maybe, or _Did you think I would forgive you?_ Part of him expected, _Did you think I would care?_

Finally, she settled on, "Are you sorry?"

A hell of a question. He had wanted her with him, wanted the warmth of her back against his chest when he fell asleep, ached in the mornings when her absence was there instead. But he had also felt a sour sort of relief, shutting the door behind him, getting farther and farther away. "I missed you," he told her again, not sure how to explain, but certain that she would be angry to hear him say, _I was afraid you would get hurt_ and _I was afraid you would say it was worth the risk_.

"That's not the same thing," Ariadne observed, just as a knock signalled that the room service had arrived. She narrowed her eyes, scowling at the door. "Fuck," she muttered, frustrated. "If you didn't look like death and I weren't starving, I'd ignore the door and we'd have this out right now," she told him, relenting. "But you're saved by paella."

Arthur tried to smile. It felt like a bad forgery. "I have excellent timing," he said, lightly.

"You have horrible timing," she corrected, and went to let the porter in. "You're just usually charming enough to pull it off."

"I usually have pants on," Arthur said absently, fiddling with the belt on his bathrobe as the porter wheeled the cart into the room. "That has something to do with it. You didn't happen to bring any clothes, did you?" he asked the young man, sliding sideways into the persona of Neil Charles. Charles, he decided, really missed his pants.

"Yes, sir," the porter said, and pulled out a floppy paper-wrapped package from the shelf underneath the cart and handed it to Arthur. "Is there anything else you need, sir? Miss?"

"I'm sure we'll be fine," Ariadne said, and took the charge slip to sign it. "Neil, you'd better check and see if the clothes are the right size." Arthur did as she asked, and opened the package, drawing the porter's attention from what Ariadne was doing with the charge slip. He suppressed a smile, making a show of examining the tags on the plain shirt and trousers and pajamas the concierge had sent: Ariadne was using one of Eames' favorite tricks and signing the slip upside down-- it altered the natural slant of her hand and made it easier to make the fake signature flow.

"Looks good," Arthur said, as Ariadne finished her stab at credit card fraud. "Thanks, man," he told the porter. "This'll hold me until I can get out and buy something else tomorrow."

"You," Ariadne said, giving the charge slip back to the porter along with a folded bill, "are going to _rest_ tomorrow. Not shop."

Arthur rolled his eyes. The porter smirked discreetly, and asked, "If there is anything else?"

"No, thanks," Arthur said. "I think we're good." The porter ducked his head and faded out the door.

Ariadne lifted the cover on one of the plates and groaned appreciatively. "Oh, god, _food_ ," she said to her plate, picking it up and settling down into one of the armchairs to eat, "it has been entirely too long since I've seen you." Arthur couldn't help snorting in amusement.

Ariadne glared in his direction. "Shut up," she told him around a mouthful of shrimp and quinoa, "I haven't eaten since last night, I'm allowed to be hungry." She swallowed her bite, then said, "It's really good, too. You should try your soup before it gets cold."

"No, I'll leave you two alone for a moment," he said, holding up a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. "I'm going to put on something less fuzzy." He paused, uncertain. "Or. Did you want to talk more about," he fumbled for something that wasn't as painfully misleading and clumsy as _our relationship_ , "what we were discussing earlier?" He really didn't want to, but it seemed right to offer.

Ariadne put down her fork, looking appalled. "God, no," she said. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Look, Arthur," she told him, "I'm pissed at you, and worried about how we're getting out of here, and tired, and part of me really wants to throw this plate in your face because you don't just get to, to stand there and look ridiculous in a bathrobe and say 'I missed you.' I've had _two years_ to get used to the idea that I wanted you more than you wanted me." Her voice stumbled over that, and Arthur shook his head, opening his mouth to tell her she was wrong, but she held up a hand. "No," she said. "We'll talk about this later, when I don't have a fork and a knife and a hot bowl of soup in front of me." She smiled faintly. "You don't need any more injuries right now."

Arthur returned the smile, tentative. "Thanks for that," he said. "So. Raincheck, then."

Ariadne nodded once, decisive. "Raincheck. Now," she said, "my paella's going to get cold and so is your soup. Go put on some pants, we'll eat, and then we'll work on out how we're getting out of here."

"Sounds like a plan."

"You know me," she said. "I'm good with blueprints."

* * *

"No," Ariadne told him the next morning, handing him back Magda's smooth-handled little switchblade. "I'm not carrying it. I have no idea how to use it and I'd nick an artery by accident. Besides," she told him, slinging a messenger bag over her head, "you're the one on the wires. I'm just another camera-happy tourist," she said, patting her bag.

"If you think so," Arthur said, reluctant. He slid the knife into his trouser pocket. "Right," he said, looking out the gap in the curtains and fighting the urge to make Ariadne recite the plan again. She'd indulged him twice already, but he suspected that she'd dump the remnants of her coffee on his head if he asked her to go through it a third time. His fingers itched for his die.

He felt a hand settle between his shoulder blades. "You're freaking out." She sounded sympathetic, but a little amused. He didn't appreciate it.

He shrugged, trying to shake off her hand. It didn't work. "Role reversal," he said, shortly. "I'm usually the one who does the legwork."

"I know," she said. Her hand traced a circle through his shirt. He tried not to feel soothed. "You're not used to waiting in the tower for the rescue. Speaking from experience, it sucks. You'll live, though." Arthur grunted, unconvinced. "Right," she said, stilling her hand and stepping away, "give me half an hour, and I'll have a phone. If you haven't heard from me by then, I give you permission to freak out."

"Thanks," Arthur muttered. "I'll keep that in mind." He was being an ass again, he knew. At this rate, Ariadne would ask for the knife back and use it on him. He'd probably deserve it, too.

"You do that," she told him, and nodded to the ice pack puddling on the desk. "And keep that on your face. All the stage make-up in the world isn't going to help if you're still swollen up like a grapefruit."

Arthur bit back the urge to say, _Yes, Mother_. He settled on, "Be careful," and hoped it came across as a request, and not a demand. "Try to stay out of arm's reach if you can."

Ariadne nodded, serious. "I will," she told him, moving to open the door. "You too, okay? Careful. Don't leave the room unless you have to." She took a deep breath. "I'll see you in a few hours."

He waited until she had shut the door, then crossed the room to throw the deadbolt. Half an hour. He could line up the funds while he waited, maybe do some research. Arthur grabbed Ariadne's laptop from where she had left it on the bed after breakfast and carried it, along with the cellphone, over to the desk.

They had decided the best bet was to get to Europe as quickly as possible-- he had better resources there, and she had her life in Paris to get back to-- and a commercial flight was too much of a risk, since it seemed likely that Arthur's photo from the Hammett ID would be in circulation. A quick email to one of Arthur's old contacts in Rio the night before had turned up a slightly shady charter company willing to provide a flight to Lisbon for a Patricia Archer and James McPherson at two P.M. the next day, no questions asked. Ariadne just needed to meet one of their representatives to hand over the necessary cash bribe for the customs officials and pick up the boarding passes-- really, it was just a good faith thing. Arthur had done similar meets a hundred times over the years, in much more dangerous situations. He shouldn't have been concerned.

Arthur scowled at the laptop, and pulled up one of his bank accounts with a few violent taps at the keyboard. Once Ariadne had the boarding passes in hand and was out of reach of the delivery guy, he'd approve the transfer, and they'd be fewer than twenty-four hours removed from getting out of Brazil alive. Simple.

Simple, assuming that no one had been following Ariadne when she left the hotel, or that the Flightways guy didn't get greedy and grabby. Assuming that no one on the street thought Ariadne looked like an easy mark and tried to snatch her bag. Assuming her taxi didn't drive into the river, or that MASP didn't collapse on its giant cantilevered legs while she was waiting underneath.

Assuming she didn't decide he wasn't worth the trouble, and just didn't come back. It would be a fitting turn of events, he acknowledged.

The phone buzzed against the wood of the desk, interrupting his black train of thought. The number was unknown and Arthur answered, but didn't say anything. He tapped his thumb twice against the mic and waited.

"Oh, good, you're not dead," Ariadne said, and Arthur leaned back in the desk chair, relieved. "I had my doubts."

"I could say the same," he replied. He could hear heavy traffic noise in the background, the sound of people rushing past on the sidewalk. "So you've got a phone now. Good." He rubbed at his eyes. "That's good. One thing off the list." Technically speaking, Ariadne already had a cellphone, but they had agreed it was better for her not to use it, since it was her personal number.

"Yep," she agreed. "So I'm off to see the wizard, now."

"Just stay on the yellow brick, Dorothy. No wandering into poppy fields."

Arthur could almost hear the eye roll. "I'm well aware I'm not in Kansas anymore. As far as I know, Kansas doesn't have elevated modern art museums designed by post-war Italian communist architects."

"You're at the MASP?" She must have had the taxi drop her somewhere along Paulista Avenue before picking up the phone, if she were already at the museum.

"I'm about two blocks away, I can see it," she told him. "You know, for 1960s brutalism, it's really not so bad in person. I think it's the lateral support beams-- I like the way they frame the space. Bo Bardi might have known what she was doing."

"The beams are good, yeah," Arthur said, slipping backwards two years and playing devil's advocate just to needle her, "but what if they weren't painted bright red? Then you've just got four big bulky cement legs with a dirty grey cement rectangle hanging from the underside of a table like a wad of gum." Ariadne's laugh was bright over the line. "Face it," he told her. "You're being distracted by the paint job, not the design."

"Color's a legitimate part of design theory, and you know it," Ariadne argued, the sound of her shoes sharp against the sidewalk. If he closed his eyes, he could see her: the messenger bag bumping against her skinny hips, her military-style navy jacket, open in deference to the warming spring sun, flapping over a rust-colored blouse. "What about Hundertwasser? Gaudí? You can't tell me that color isn't important."

"Of course it's important," Arthur said, feeling a smile pull at the scabbed-over cuts on his face. "But if you painted La Sagrada Familia puke green--"

"It would be a crime against humanity and would make you think, _God, that could be an amazing structure if it weren't puke green,_ " Ariadne interrupted. " _But it_ is _puke green, so it's hideous._ Which is my point."

"Which is also _my_ point." Arthur leaned the chair back onto two legs and braced his feet on the cross bar, balancing. "If color changes your reaction, and therefore the impact of the building in question, then it stands to reason that the _absence_ of color is equally crucial. So go ahead," he encouraged her. "Take away the red paint on the legs, make it bare concrete like everything else-- do you still think Bo Bardi knew what she was doing?"

"God, you're obnoxious when you think you're right," Ariadne huffed. There was something large idling in the street near her. Maybe a bus. "How did I manage to forget that about you?"

"You didn't answer my question," he pointed out, enjoying himself. "Which means you secretly agree with me."

"Which means I'm going to ignore you, because you're obnoxious and haven't seen it in person, and are therefore unfit to judge," Ariadne corrected him, and her voice was echoing a little. "Besides, I'm here."

Arthur let the chair legs down with a _thump_. "See anyone?" he asked, clearing his throat. Time to stop messing around.

"Nobody here but us tourists," she told him. "I'm still a little early." Her footsteps echoed across the cement plaza underneath the MASP. "I'm going to put the phone down and sketch a little while I'm waiting," she told him. "I won't hang up, okay? I'm just putting the phone in my pocket."

"Sounds good," Arthur nodded to himself. A tourist on her own speaking English over a cellphone in the echoing space under the museum was a lot more memorable than an art student of indeterminate nationality quietly doing some studies for class. He heard the rustle of fabric against the phone's mic for several moments, and then nothing but the muffled noises of traffic and the occasional group of tourists walking by.

Arthur put his phone on speaker and lay it on the desk, swapping it out for the cold pack. The plastic was dripping with condensation, but he went ahead and pressed it to his left cheek where the worst of the swelling was.

The bruises along his cheek and temple had been a violent puce in the mirror that morning, turning a blued yellow along the edges. Ariadne had frowned at his reflection, pushing gently against the worst of the swelling with her fingertips. "Don't boxers drain bruises like this to make them heal faster?" she asked. "I think you look worse today than you did last night."

"Thanks," Arthur had replied, dryly. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear. And since the only boxer I can think of who did that was Rocky Balboa, I'm guessing that what you're suggesting isn't standard practice for the AMA."

"It was a thought," Ariadne said, and pulled out a chemical cold pack. "Looks like you'll be spending the day freezing your face off, then."

There was a sudden and prolonged static-y sound from the phone which nearly made him drop the cold pack, and then Arthur could hear a man say, "-- be very talented. I can only just manage a stick figure." The voice had a very faint accent: German, maybe, or Swiss.

"I'm sure you're not that bad." Ariadne sounded calm, but wary. "Here," she said, and Arthur could hear the sound of something changing hands, "why don't you give it a try?"

"Such faith," the man said, and then handing something back after a quiet moment. "There. You see? Some people have a gift, and others do not."

"I don't know," Ariadne answered, sounding more confident. "I think you show plenty of talent." There was the sound of paper sliding against cloth-- presumably the boarding passes-- and the scuff of something against concrete. "Excuse me," Ariadne's voice was clearer, closer to the phone. "My boyfriend's calling, I think."

Arthur heard her take a handful of steps, and then she said, mouth next to the mic, "I've got them, everything looks fine."

"All right," Arthur said. "He gave you the routing number and account?"

"Yes," she said, and read off a quick string of numbers. Arthur keyed them in, entered the agreed upon sum, and hit submit.

 _Transfer complete_ , the screen told him, and he relayed the information to Ariadne.

"It was nice to meet you," he heard her tell the man. "You know, they have night art classes at some museums," she continued. "You really ought to look into it, if you're interested." Arthur could hear the man answer, but couldn't make out the words.

"Is he leaving?" Arthur asked after a beat, impatient. He needed cameras, or something. Not being able to see what was going on was incredibly frustrating.

"He's going," Ariadne answered. "He waited to check something on his phone-- to see if the payment went through, I guess-- and then left. He's almost to the corner now. Hasn't looked back and," Ariadne must have turned her head, because it was difficult to make out the next few words, "--pretty sure he was alone."

Arthur felt his shoulders relax a little. "Good," he said. "You think you're up for the rest of it?" he asked.

"Not a problem," she told him, confident. "It's like the world's weirdest scavenger hunt. I was always good at those."

"This isn't an Easter egg hunt," he said. "Not too much at one store, different cards at each one, and try to keep your face away from the cameras."

"I know," she said, sounding overly-patient. "I get it. But if you don't let me joke about this a little, Arthur, I'm going to start jumping at shadows. Besides, I usually fade into the background pretty well," she said, and the traffic noise was becoming more noticeable. "People don't really pay that much attention to me. Short girl syndrome."

Arthur snorted. "I don't see how that could ever be remotely possible," he said, because the idea that someone could walk into a room and not know she was there was completely absurd to him. She was Ariadne, and therefore magnetic.

Ariadne was silent for a moment. Then she said, "Was that a compliment, or-- I really don't know how to take that, honestly."

"Compliment," Arthur said, trying for matter-of-fact and missing by a mile. "You know you're unforgettable."

"I really don't," Ariadne said, sounding confused, "but thanks. I think I'm going to hang up now, before this gets any weirder."

"Right," Arthur said. He cleared his throat. "Call if anything happens?"

"Yeah," she agreed, her voice overly upbeat. "I should be back in a couple hours, and I'll call if I'm going to be any longer than that."

Arthur nodded and said, "Sounds good. I'll see you in a few," and waited to hang up until she did like some sort of heartsick teenager. Then he folded his arms on the desk and rested his forehead on top.

"Really not the time for this," he muttered to himself. "Christ." There never really was a good time to remember why one was stupidly in love with someone who ought to be out of bounds, however, so Arthur decided to put the unwelcome thought away to examine later, and turned his attention to the more immediate problem at hand.


	3. Chapter 3

**  
_Part Three._   
**

* * *

Ariadne returned to the hotel two hours later, as promised, to find him propped up against the bed's headboard in deference to his ribs, her laptop and several sheets of hotel stationary covered in writing littering the duvet.

"Good news or bad news first?" Arthur asked her as she parked her bags and a small rolling suitcase just inside the door, and tried to decide if _sugerido_ was more properly translated _suggested_ or _implied_ in this particular context. Google translate and his college-era Italian were currently at odds.

Ariadne pushed a messy bit of hair behind her ear. Her cheeks and nose were flushed with the faint beginnings of a sunburn. "Oh, bad news, definitely," she said, and sat down on the bed next to him. "Might as well get it over with."

"My feelings exactly," Arthur said, and scooted the laptop across the bed to her after clicking over to the tab from _O Globo_. "Here," he said. "This showed up online about an hour ago." He pointed to an article with the headline, CHAGAS ALVO DE CRIME MENTAL, ASSISSINATOS.

Ariadne raised her eyebrows at him. "I'm assuming you've translated it, because unless that's secretly French, I'm not going to be much use."

"It's rough," Arthur told her, handing her one of the pages of stationary. "Turns out that Spanish plus Italian doesn't exactly equal Portuguese, believe it or not. Anyway," he said as she took the paper, "the gist is the police in Taguatinga made it public that we were planning a mind crime, and they've figured out that Chagas was the target. It's headline news-- I checked, and it's all over the TV stations, too. Add the murders and the whole Vienna court case fiasco, and I wouldn't be surprised if this gets picked up outside of Brazil."

"Awesome," Ariadne said, scanning the translated article, "Yay, international stardom for you." She looked up. "Taguatinga? I thought you were in Brasilia."

"One of the satellite cities," Arthur explained. "It was easier to blend in there than in the capital itself. Cheaper to rent a work space, too."

Ariadne nodded. "Practical as always. And the good news?"

Arthur tapped the third paragraph down on the laptop screen. "Remember that fight I told you about between Souza and Chagas last year? Other people remember it, too: _Em outubro do ano passado, Chagas foi visto por todo país discutindo com Guilherme Leitão Souza, um membro importante do Partido dos Trabalhadores da Bahia, na porta do Congresso Nacional,_ " he read, clusmsy over the vowels, aware that his pronunciation was probably enough to make even the most forgiving listener cringe. He continued undetered. " _Chagas preferiu não comentar sobre sua possível extração, porém, um de seus representantes sugeriu que a motivação do ataque poderia ser político._ "

Ariadne looked at him expectantly. "I got something about Chagas, and something about Souza, and something about the National Congress."

"You got the important part, then," Arther said, satisfied. "Basically, it talks about how Chagas and Souza don't get along, mentions the fight they had last year, and then goes on to say that one of Chagas' aids implied that Chagas was a target for political reasons."

"Nice," Ariadne said, nodding. "So even if the police aren't looking at Souza, the media is."

"It's not a pair of handcuffs," Arthur agreed, "but the attention might keep him busy for a day or two. Long enough to get the hell out of here without any more trouble from him. Plus," he said, satisfied, "there's nothing specifically about me-- Hammett, I mean-- showing up anywhere, so the police haven't released that to the media yet. It'll leak out eventually, but we've got a little time." He sat up and gestured to the bags Ariadne had left by the full-length mirror propped against the wall. "Mind if I take a look?" he asked.

"Go for it," Ariadne said, picking up another translated article. "Just remember, I was buying off the rack from memory. No bitching about about tailoring."

"I'll try," he said, picking through on of the smaller bags first: heavy cream foundation in several colors, makeup brushes, some sort of powder, green corrective tint, and a few small glass bottles of some cream stuff. "What's this stuff?" he asked Ariadne, holding up one of the bottles.

"Grossly over-priced moisturizer, from what I can tell," she answered. "The girl at the counter said it makes it easier to apply makeup over scars. I thought it might help if we covered the cuts on your face with it, otherwise the foundation's just going to gunk up on the scabs."

"Sounds incredibly attractive when you put it like that," Arthur said, and put the bottles back, moving on to one of the larger bags. In it, he found several good quality dress shirts, underwear, a light-weight grey sweater, a pair of charcoal trousers, three silk ties, and a navy pencil skirt. "I somehow don't think this is going to fit me," he said, holding up the skirt in its tissue paper.

"You said professional," Ariadne shrugged. "The stuff I had with me is pretty much grad school chic, not high-powered executive." She tapped the paper she was looking at. "Hey, you weren't involved in the thing in Vienna last year, were you?"

"Christ, no." Arthur pulled out two pairs of glasses: one with thick black frames, one with sleeker silver wire. He wasn't sure if they'd help hide the bruising or draw attention to it, but they weren't a bad idea. There was also a plastic bag filled with toiletries, including shaving cream and a razor. Apparently Ariadne wasn't impressed by his mottled three day attempt at a beard. "I heard about it before, though. Turned it down because it had major fuck-up written all over it. I think Eames knows the architect, though."

"You're kidding," Ariadne said, looking up. "Who was it?"

"Some hotshot rookie out of Bonne," he said. "Who is probably going to sing like an over-rated soprano for Interpol in return for a deal, which is why everybody's trying to stay under the radar until it all shakes out." The next large bag contained a pair of patent leather red peep-toe pumps, a men's black leather belt, and a sharp-looking briefcase. "Nice," he said, fingering the shoes appreciatively. "Valentino?"

"I blame you," Ariadne said. "I used to be perfectly happy with my knockoff ballet flats. Do you know the excuses I have to come up with to explain why I own five pairs of Salvatore Feramagos on a grad student budget?"

"I don't feel this is something I need to apologize for," Arthur said. "Besides, you could just kill off a fictional relative and come into some money. Maybe then you could ditch the scarves, too," he suggested.

"I like the scarves, thanks," Ariadne replied. "You'll just have to suffer. You know, it's going to be interesting to see what happens in this court case," she said thoughtfully. "I've been following some of the debates going on back in the States, and I don't think they'll be able to completely outlaw dream-share in all cases in the U.S. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few legitimate avenues that come out of all this-- the military isn't going to want to give up using PASIVs in training, and it's only a matter of time before the private sector gloms on, too."

"You're probably right," Arthur agreed, opening a bag and shutting it again quickly. "I think this one's all yours," he said, clearing his throat, trying to erase the scraps of lace from his memory.

"Oh," Ariadne said, sounding a little embarrassed. "Yeah, I'll take that." She scrambled off the bed and grabbed the offending bag. "Anyway," she said, overly loud. "Does everything look okay? I wasn't sure about the suit."

"Haven't looked at it yet," Arthur said, and reached for the hanging bag. Inside was a sharp charcoal two-button suit with faint grey pinstripes. "Zegna," he said, approving. He rubbed a thumb along the line of the jacket's lapel. "You've got a good eye."

"I wasn't sure about the fit on the vest," she said, uncertain. "It was the best I could do given the time limit."

"It looks fine," he assured her, examining the tag, and smiled. "Really, you did good. Thanks."

"You're welcome," she said. "So. What next?"

"Think we could risk the restaurant downstairs for dinner?" he asked. "I'm going a little stir crazy in here, and we could see how the make-up stuff works." He wasn't exaggerating about the cabin-fever; they hadn't even been able to open the curtains, and one could only stare at abstract hotel art-- even upscale abstract hotel art-- for so long before wanting to draw all over the canvasses in Sharpie. Too much longer in this room and he'd resort to trying to untangle the story lines of the telenovelas he'd caught a glimpse of on TV while looking for the news.

Ariadne pursed her lips, considering. "I think it would be okay," she said, slowly. "The lighting's pretty dim in there. Besides, it's probably a good idea for you to be someone other than _that one guy who never left his room_ for the hotel staff."

Arthur nodded. "Sounds good." He gathered up the clothing and toiletries, trying not to wince at the sharp twinge in his ribcage as he bent at the waist. The compression bandages weren't helping as much as he would have liked. "I'm going to go see how these fit," he told her.

Ariadne looked at him for a moment, then crossed the room to rummage through the giant basket of first aid supplies. She pulled out a bottle of painkillers and handed them to him. "I'm very impressed with your stoicism," she told him, dryly. "Now drug yourself. I'm going to check in with Cobb and let him know we have a way out."

Arthur shook out four ibuprofen and dry-swallowed them, grimacing at the taste. "Give him the flight number so he can track it," he said, and stepped into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Shaving was an exercise in slight of hand, but he managed it without causing himself further injury. He felt rather pleased with himself once he was dressed. The cuts on his face still made him look a little like Frankenstein's monster, but overall, he could recognize himself in the mirror and he was pretty sure he wouldn't frighten small children or cause old ladies to call the cops on him.

"Much better," Ariade said, approvingly as he came out of the bathroom. "You looked like the hobo version of yourself yesterday. It was really disturbing." She tossed another ice pack at him. "Now lay down and put that back on your face for a while, and then we'll see if we can't make you look pretty before we go down for dinner," she said, picking up a bottle of liquid foundation and shaking it menacingly.

"I swear, if you come at me with eyeliner, Ariadne," Arthur warned, shoving a pile of papers over to the other side of the bed and laying down, "I will not be responsible for my actions."

"Did you see any eyeliner in that bag?" Ariadne asked, unzipping the rolling suitcase she had parked by the door. "You did not," she answered herself. "Because _I_ am clever," she told him, folding the clothes left in the shopping bags and placing them in the suitcase, "and I know better than to try something like that without adequate supplies of alcohol, which I don't currently have."

"Note to self," Arthur said, laying the cold pack back over his face and feeling strangely content, "no wine at dinner."

* * *

The restaurant was dimly lit, the tables curled into corners upholstered in dark buttery leather. Ariadne's attempt at stage make-up was apparently passing muster, because neither the hostess nor the waiter had taken a second look at Arthur's face. It had taken longer than either of them had expected, however-- Arthur had needed to scrub off the first three tries because Ariadne wasn't satisfied with the evenness of the make-up, and his face stung and throbbed underneath the tint and powder.

"I feel like I've got mud all over my face," Arthur had complained during the second attempt.

"Well, you sort of do," Ariadne said absently, lightly stippling his cheek with some sort of foam wedge thing. "Turn your head so I can see?" she instructed, and then wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, no, you look like the spray tan booth sprung a leak on one side. Whoops. Go wash it off and we'll try again."

Arthur drew the chair out for Ariadne at the table, and then slid into the seat opposite. "Very smooth," she told him, and asked the waiter for a glass of wine, looking pointedly at Arthur.

"I'll have sparkling water, thank you," he told the waiter, and Ariadne rolled her eyes.

"Teetotaler," she said derisively. "Coward."

"Cautious," he corrected her. "For all I know, you'd take pictures and send them to Eames."

"I'd never do that," Ariadne protested, and then said, "Thank you," as the waiter returned with their drinks. They ordered after examining the menu quickly, and Ariadne shook out her napkin and settled it in her lap. She leaned forward, propping her elbow up on the table and resting her jaw against her fist. "So," she said. "Dinner conversation that could pass for normal from across the room. You go first," she instructed.

Arthur leaned back in his chair. "All right," he said, gamely. "Miles says you're finishing your dissertation this year. How's it going?" Ariadne snorted, and took a sip of her wine. Arthur raised his eyebrows. "Bad topic?"

She shook her head. "No, not really," she told him, hunching her shoulders slightly. "It's all really pretty much done, at this point-- I just have all the editing and defense crap to go through, now. If Miles okays the revisions, I should be done with my defense by January."

"Congratulations," Arthur said, raising his glass. "You must be glad it's almost over."

"You have no idea," she said, shaking her head slowly. "I was going to add in the stuff I told you about earlier, populism and urban planning?" Arthur nodded. "But I don't know that it really fits with the rest of my argument, honestly-- it might just be a separate article, or something." She made a face, screwing up her nose. "I'm just-- I don't know, a little disenchanted with the whole project at this point. I think I'm just ready to do something else for a while. But everybody tells me that's pretty normal for a dissertation: by the end, you just want to toss the whole thing into a shredder and forget it."

"Sounds reasonable," he said. "Did you wind up sticking with that thing," Arthur couldn't remember the term, he just remembered her trying to explain it in a café in Istanbul a month before he panicked, her eyes bright and hands flying in excitement, "the quail thing?"

"Spacial qualia," she said, smiling. "Yeah, sort of. Except I decided to look at space and dimension as a collective experience, and not an individual one. Which meant there was practically no literature to draw from, so I wound up having to do a fair amount of field work. Which was fun, but, you know, a little time consuming." She raised her eyebrows. "I'm surprised you remember that, I don't think I talked about it much."

"You didn't," he said. "But it was an interesting concept."

"It is," she agreed. "And fairly applicable in-- a professional capacity," she caught herself, and Arthur understood that she wasn't talking about industrial design. "Miles and I have been talking about that, actually," she told him, lowering her voice. "He wants me to write a sort of parallel version of my dissertation for publication-- but shorter, thank god-- specifically addressing the spacial experience of _that_ sort of architecture. But not until the Vienna case shakes out," she said, holding up a hand to stall Arthur's incipient protest. "I don't want to be arrested for publishing it, so I haven't even started yet. But Miles thinks that once the legal stuff is settled, there's going to be a metric ton of scholarship on-- design in your line of work, and if I can get in on the ground floor I'd have my pick of faculty appointments."

"Is that what you want?" he asked, genuinely curious. He realized that he'd never asked before, during the first year after the Fischer job, or in their months together. "Academia? Tenure?" In some ways, he could see it: Ariadne had an amazing gift for enthusiasm, for inspiring enthusiasm in others. She would be the sort of professor whose students came early and stayed late and found themselves changing their majors after taking her classes.

"Maybe," she answered. "I really miss designing, though." She didn't specify whether she meant designing in the dreams or not, but she didn't really need to; he knew better than anyone how addictive building a world could be. "It's like this itch in the back of my brain, sometimes, and all I want is to get back into it. And then there are days when I start thinking about things and wish that Miles had kept his mouth shut and I'd never drawn those mazes," she said idly.

"The first few jobs, I didn't really think about the morality of it, you know? It was just what if seemed like: pure creation. But--," she traced a finger along the top of her glass, and let her sentence drift off: _But it was dangerous_ , or _But it was wrong_ , or any number of other qualifiers just under the surface. She shook her head. "Who knows," she said, clearing her throat, "maybe eventually I'll be able to design without participating in-- what did that article this afternoon call it?"

"I don't remember," Arthur said. "I liked the guy who said it was 'immoral, dangerous, and terrifyingly Orwellian.'"

"Well," Ariadne said, consideringly, "it's not like he's wrong."

"No," Arthur agreed, "he's not. What we do-- what I do-- is a violation of privacy at best, and something a whole lot more violent at its worst."

She picked up her glass, swirling the dregs at the bottom in a garnet spiral. "So if it weren't, would you?" she asked, abruptly.

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "If it weren't what?"

"If it weren't an invasion of privacy anymore," she clarified, "would you still do it? What if it weren't a crime-- what if there were legal options? If there were other ways to use the-- to be able to do that sort of design work? Or is it all about the risk, for you?"

"I don't know," Arthur said, slowly. It wasn't the first time he had thought about that particular question, and he wasn't any closer to an answer than he had been when Cobb had asked six years before. "Current situation aside," he said, "I'm pretty good at my job. And I like the risk, or else I would have gone to work in a cubicle, or something. But then again, no one I've worked before with has ever been killed during a job-- Nash was after, and it was his own damn fault, anyway." He exhaled heavily, thinking of Putcelli's sunglasses, still sitting on the counter next to the sink in their room upstairs. "But I'm finding that I don't like having a body count on my conscience."

"You're not going to get out of it, though, are you?" Ariadne didn't sound judgemental, for which he was grateful.

Arthur shook his head, indecisive. "I have no idea," he said, surprising himself by being honest. "I don't know what else I'd do if I didn't do this. But if my IDs fall through, no one is going to want to hire me. I'd be a huge security risk. Hell, I'd probably tell people _not_ to hire me if Interpol winds up on my tail." _Got no room for bodies_ , he remembered, and he felt his mouth slide up at the corner.

"What is it?" Ariadne asked.

"Just something the guy who drove me down here said," he said. "He told me I wasn't allowed to die in his van, because he didn't have room for bodies."

"Not many people do," Ariadne said, and tapped her finger against her wine glass, raising her eyebrow in warning. The server appeared from behind Arthur and set their entrees down in front of them, fragrant and gorgeous in presentation, and they let the conversation drift off in more mundane directions for the remainder of the meal.

Later, in the elevator back up to the room, Arthur found himself examining the picture the two of them made in the mirrored doors: a young couple on their way back to their hotel room after a night out. The man, a little puffy around the eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses, had his arm around the young woman's waist. They looked relaxed, leaning in towards the other, pleased with each other's company.

It was an impressive illusion, convincing enough to make him wish he could check his totem.

* * *

The cathedral was falling apart: huge chunks of the vaulted ceiling had collapsed, revealing the dull grey sky outside and burying the length of several pews under piles of drying sand.

"The tide is coming in," Magda told him, her voice bubbling through the long gash across her throat. She was digging through the sand with her hands, trying to shape a city out of the ceiling's rubble. "A storm in a glass of water. We will have to work very quickly."

"You can't be the architect anymore," Arthur said. "You're dead. I'll have to get someone else."

Putcelli, half-buried by a portion of the collapsed roof, agreed.

Magda ignored them, and continued working frantically with her hands. Her locket swung back and forth as she pushed the sand into shapes that held for a moment, and then crumbled again into their composite parts. Blood was dripping from her throat onto her hands. She had red lacquered fingernails.

The sea ate at the confessional, pouring in through the broken stained glass windows to surround the driftwood booth. "I think we should leave," Arthur told the priest through the screen, but he shook his head.

"I need the money," the priest said, and there was blood soaking his stiff white collar. "We should stay and finish the job."

"You're dead, too," Arthur told him, and Magda looked back through the screen, surprised.

"Ano, of course I am," she agreed. "This does not mean I cannot build," she said, and then the tide came in.

Arthur opened his eyes, choking on salt water and sand, the dark shape of Ariadne looking blearily back at him from across the bed, her hair tangled across the white pillow.

"You were dreaming," she told him, her voice thick with sleep, and slid her hand under her pillow to pull out her totem. "Look," she said, and flipped it upside down so that he could see how she had hollowed out the base of the bishop. "This is real. You're awake," she said.

"Mm," he hummed, unconvinced. The bed was soft underneath him, and he could feel the warmth of Ariadne's body heat radiating from where she was laying, an arm's length away. He didn't feel like he was awake.

"Arthur," Ariadne insisted. "Hey. Stop it." She reached out and grabbed his hand, dragging it across the mattress to lay flat in front of her. "Here," she said, and placed her chess piece beside his hand. "Don't touch it," she instructed. "Tell me what you can feel," and she knocked the bishop over with her finger. It hit the mattress lightly, and Arthur could just feel the tiny jolt the brass piece made when it landed next to his hand. Ariadne looked at him expectantly.

"I don't know," he said. "It's hardly there. Like if you dropped a penny on the mattress."

Ariadne nodded, pleased. "It's really light. It's surprising, every time I pick it up. The rim around the bottom is sharp, too-- I keep thinking I should sand it down or polish it or something, but I think the irregularity of it helps, sometimes. I've cut myself on it before, though," she said.

Arthur exhaled. "Thanks," he said. His sense of unreality was fading: he had a timeline of events in his head, and he remembered Ariadne with a band-aid on her finger from where she had nicked herself on her totem during the Fischer job. "It was a dream," he said, testing the statement aloud, and finding that it was true.

"I didn't realize you still dreamt normally," Ariadne said, turning onto her side to face him. She pulled the comforter up around her ears. For someone who was always warm to the touch, Ariadne got cold easily.

"I wouldn't say _normally_ ," Arthur corrected her, rolling onto his back and glancing at the clock beside the bed. It was a little after four in the morning. The countdown clock in his head sped forward several hours. "I get bad dreams, sometimes, not normal ones."

"And this one?" Ariadne asked. "What was it about?"

Arthur shrugged. "Souza," he said. "The job. Not very creative, either: Magda was building the cathedral out of sand, and it was falling down because the tide was coming in. She was bleeding all over the place," he said absently. "Wouldn't stop working, even though she knew she was dead. She said she needed the money."

"Magda was the architect?" Ariadne asked, her voice carefully neutral. Arthur made a noise of assent; she hadn't asked about his team before, he realized. "Did she? Need the money, I mean," Ariadne clarified.

"Most people do," Arthur said. He cleared his throat. "But yeah," he said, after thinking a moment. "I got the impression that she needed the money. She was really quick to take the job when I offered it to her. I think she has a kid somewhere," he said, slowly. "Older. A daughter, maybe. She was on the phone with someone a lot when I worked with her in St. Petersburg. Sounded like it had to be a teenager from the arguments."

"Oh," said Ariadne. She was quiet a moment, and Arthur wondered if she had fallen back asleep. "I don't think I said before," her voice came low across the space between them, "but I'm sorry. About your team."

"They were dreaming," he told her. He remembered their bare forearms splashed with blood, the way Putcelli's fingers were curled towards his palms, loose claws open to the workshop ceiling. It was easier to think about in the dark, for some reason. "Their throats were cut. I suppose it was quick," he said, uncertain. "I don't know if they would have felt any pain in the dream."

Ariadne shifted beside him. "I'm pretty sure they wouldn't," she said, then, "I don't know if that makes a difference, though."

"It doesn't," Arthur said. "They're still dead." He wondered if they had blinked out of existence in the dream all at once, or faded out with their pulses.

"But you're not," Ariadne pointed out.

"True," he conceded, but felt compelled to continue. "For the moment, at least. That will probably change at some point."

He could almost hear Ariadne roll her eyes. "Pessimistic asshole," she said, the insult slurring with sleep. "You're not dead. That's a good thing. _I'm_ not dead, and that's a _very_ good thing, because I'm kind of fond of living," she continued. "And we've established that we're both real, and that neither of us is dreaming. More good things. So that's at least three, four good things we've got going at the moment." She inhaled deeply, her mouth stretching around a yawn. "Although I could do without being awake at four-whatever in the morning."

Arthur felt an answering yawn growing in his own mouth. "You do that on purpose," he told her, turning back onto his side and folding his pillow in half. "Every time."

"Maybe." She smiled. "It's a possibility. Think you can sleep now?"

"If I don't, will you suffocate me with a pillow?" he asked.

"That's another possibility," she said, and pulled the covers over her head.

* * *

Arthur was finishing his coffee when his phone rang the next morning. It was Cobb; Arthur considered getting Ariadne out of the shower so they could talk, but decided to wait until he knew what was up.

"Are you near a television?" Cobb asked as soon as Arthur picked up. "You need to check the news, now." He sounded grim.

"Give me a second," Arthur said, feeling his pulse jump and looking for the remote. "Do we need to run? We can be out of here in five if we have to be." He found the remote on the dresser and starting looking for the hotel's CNN International channel.

"They've leaked the Hammett photo to the press," Cobb said flatly. "It's pretty bad and doesn't look a lot like you, but--"

"No, yeah, I was hoping I could get out of the country before that happened," Arthur said, exhaling heavily. He found the correct channel: a woman in a red silk suit was talking to a wall of flashing televisions. "Fun times. I've always dreamed of being on wanted posters."

"On the up side," Cobb said, "I've managed to track down the PASIV for you."

In the bathroom, the shower turned off. "Where is it?" Arthur asked, distracted as the newscaster said something about a press conference while showing helicopter footage of men in dark windbreakers swarming a parked Town Car. The footage changed, and showed a man removing a very familiar aluminum briefcase from the trunk. "You're fucking kidding me," he said blankly. The footage switched back to a studio shot, and the television wall behind the woman in red was plastered with the headline, MIND CRIME MURDER SCANDAL IN BRAZIL, Martim Goullard das Chagas' angry red face peering out from behind the screaming letters.

"I take it you found the news, then," Cobb said. "It's kind of elegant, really: Souza plants the PASIV in one of Chagas' cars, makes it look like Chagas had the whole extraction set-up faked in order to make Souza look bad, and throws the murder suspicions in that direction."

Arthur sat down heavily on the bed. "And Chagas will be politically neutered for the foreseeable future," he said. "If there are criminal charges, he'll be suspended from the National Congress until it goes to trial or they clear him. Which means Souza can push his legislation through without major opposition."

"And that's what he wanted in the first place, isn't it."

"Yeah," Arthur said, watching as the woman in red interviewed a man in an ill-fitting navy blue blazer by satellite.

"Just how widespread _are_ these crimes, professor?" she was asking, her flat Midwestern voice sounding slightly greedy at the prospect of a scoop. "And are there protective measures our viewers can take to prevent this sort of mental assault?"

"We really have no way of knowing just how many victims there are, Harper," the man said, his forehead shining underneath the lights. There was a distinct orange streak under his chin where the pancake make-up hadn't been blended in properly. "Since February of last year, we here at IM have documented at least eight hundred separate cases of mental assault in the last six months, worldwide. But we believe that number to be vastly, _vastly_ lower than the actual number of cases--"

"Where the fuck do they get these numbers?" Arthur wondered. "I did six jobs last year. _Six_."

"I know," Cobb said. "Eames does more jobs than anyone else I know, and even he can't pull more than a dozen in a year. Besides," he said, sounding darkly amused, "if you do it right--"

"There's nothing to report. Yeah," Arthur finished the thought as Ariadne came out of the bathroom, hair long and wet, tugging at the zipper on the side of her skirt.

"Is that Cobb?" she asked, and then took a look at the television, where a violently yellow scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen informed viewers that there was a SCANDAL involving a MIND CRIME and MURDER, and that police had ARRESTED BRAZILIAN POLITICIAN, MARTIM GOULLARD DAS CHAGAS in connection with the crimes.

"Oh," she said, and blinked. "Do we need an earlier flight?" she asked after a moment, calm, and Arthur wanted to kiss her.

He nodded instead. "An earlier flight would be good," he told her. "You want to call Flightways, see if they can swing it? I'll get started on the room."

"Do the two of you have everything under control?" Cobb asked, sounding concerned. "If the flight doesn't work, I think I can work out something with Lionel to get you over to Uruguay at least."

"Don't," Arthur said, standing up and beginning to gather all of the papers he'd written on the previous afternoon. "Lionel will bleed you dry if you do, and you've got piano lessons and college tuition to pay for. Ariadne and I can handle it," he said, and found that he meant it.

"If you're sure," Cobb said, reluctant. "The offer stands, though. It's not a hardship."

"I know." Arthur opened the leather briefcase Ariadne had bought the day before, and tossed in the black rubberized bag he'd brought from Brasilia; it held the emergency passports Magda and Putcelli had never needed. He needed to dump them, but preferably not in this country. "Look, thanks for the heads up."

"No problem," Cobb said. "I'll let you go so you can work. Let me know when you get the flight figured out, okay?"

"Yeah. I'll call back in a bit," Arthur said, and hit _end_. Across the room, Ariadne was deftly folding a pair of jeans before putting them into her suitcase, saying, "Yes, this is Patricia Archer, I was wondering if it would be possible to move the departure time of my charter flight this afternoon?" into the phone held between her chin and shoulder. "Mm, yes," she said, zipping the suitcase closed with one hand and reaching for the boarding passes on the desk with the other. "I have them right here."

Arthur let himself admire her efficiency for a half-second, then went to the bathroom to try get started on covering up his bruises. He had just finished smoothing in the weird moisturizer stuff when Ariadne came in, cradling the phone in her palm. "Ten thirty okay?" she asked, and he leaned out the door to look at the bedside clock. It was a quarter to nine.

He nodded. "We can make it," he said. They would need to move, the airport was half an hour away, but it was possible.

"Ten thirty would be excellent," Ariadne told the Flightways representative over the phone, sounding pleasantly professional. "Thank you so much, you've been very helpful. Mr. McPherson and I greatly appreciate it." She waited a moment, and then flipped the phone shut. "Flight changed," she said decisively. "Next?"

Arthur tossed her a foam sponge and the green corrective tint. "Do your worst," he told her, leaning against the edge of the vanity. "Then we should let Cobb know about the flight, check out, and get the hell out of here before the concierge decides to turn on the news and realizes that Neil Charles would look a lot like Grant Hammett if he weren't all beat up."

"Right," said Ariadne, dabbing the sponge gently over the long slice by his left eye. "And somewhere in there I need to dry my hair."

"If you insist," Arthur said. "Personally, I think it's a good look on you."

"Shut up and let me do this," Ariadne said, pressing a little harder than was necessary over Arthur's cheekbone. She worked silently for a moment, then said, "The murders still don't make sense, you know."

Arthur raised an eyebrow. Ariadne's left thumb was covering his mouth as she worked, so he didn't respond.

"They don't fit," she explained. "Let's say Souza decides he doesn't actually want an extraction for whatever reason, he just wants Chagas tied up in some sort of criminal mess to keep him out of the National Congress-- he had absolutely _no reason_ to kill your team. He could have just bought a PASIV on the black market, planted it on Chagas, and had someone discover it on an anonymous tip. What with the media hysterics, there wouldn't have even had to have been a crime-- the fact that he had a PASIV in his possession would be enough to kill his political credit for a while." She tapped his jaw lightly with a finger. "Turn," she instructed, and leaned in, considering her work. "Not bad," she declared.

Arthur began to pull away-- she was very close and very warm, and it made him remember things he had no business remembering without her express permission-- but she held him in place. "Powder," she reminded him, "or you're just going to sweat it all off." She held up the make-up brush menacingly.

"I think I can manage that," he told her, taking the brush from her, "if you want to dry your hair or whatever."

"You should take off your shirt first," she told him, and switched the dryer on. "Or put a towel around your neck!" she called over the dryer's noise. "Otherwise you'll get powder over everything!"

He rolled his eyes and unbuttoned the shirt he was wearing, shrugging it off. He dumped some of the loose power into the container's lid, tapped the brush in it a few times, and swiped it across his face quickly, the way Ariadne had the previous night. He looked at himself in the mirror, shrugged, and turned to put his shirt back on. Looked okay to him. When he turned back around, Ariadne was staring at him in the mirror, her eyes darting away when he caught her.

"How are your ribs feeling?" she asked loudly. "The bruises look better today!"

"They're a little better," he said, and gestured over his shoulder. "I'll go finish up out there and text Cobb about the flight, okay?" Ariadne nodded, and turned back to the mirror.

After texting Cobb, it took Arthur another five minutes to sweep the room, checking through the trash for credit card receipts and other telling items while keeping one eye on the clock and the other on the television. He doubled checked that Ariadne's passport for Patricia Archer was in her purse, tossing his own false ID for James McPherson on top of the vest and tie waiting on the bed, along with the little switchblade.

Onscreen, the female newscaster had given way to an older man with a nattily trimmed mustache wearing a sweater vest. He appeared to be rehashing the details of the botched Vienna job in January: "...when three victims were _involuntarily_ given the drug Somnacin, which was designed to induce comas in the case of _traumatic brain injuries_ ," the man's mustache gleefully informed its viewers. "Incorrectly used, however, the drug can allow multiple individuals to invade the subconscious of a single dreamer. Douglas Ashbourne, the CEO of Inhealth Limited, the makers of Somnacin, is expected to _testify_ before a Congressional panel October--"

Arthur turned the television off; there didn't seem to be anything new about Chagas or Souza, and his picture wasn't all over the screen, so he could probably turn it off without missing much. He was about to stick his head back in the bathroom to see if Ariadne was nearly done when the hair dryer stopped, and she called out, "Give me three minutes and I'm ready to go, I promise."

"No rush," Arthur said, lying as he glanced at the clock. He picked up the tie he'd left on the bed, looping a quick single Windsor by feel, and put on the vest and the black-framed glasses he'd worn the night before. He would leave the jacket off until they got to the airport; he needed to be the hapless Neil Charles in the lobby, not uber-professional James McPherson. That ID Arthur tucked into the interior pocket on the vest-- he needed to keep the Charles ID in his trouser pocket until they left the hotel.

"Catch," Ariadne said, coming out of the bathroom and tossing him a zipped up padded cloth pouch. "And I think you'll find that was two minutes and change."

He caught, obedient. "You're good," he acknowledged. "I'm keeping the make-up?" he asked.

"You should take it with you," she told him, putting her own make-up into her suitcase, shoving the loose bottles and tubes in amongst her socks. "In case you need to reapply it sometime after Lisbon, or decide to pursue a career as a drag queen." She looked up at him, slightly flushed, but polished: her hair was in a loose knot at the base of her neck, her arms pale under the short sleeves of her blouse. "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. She slid her feet into the red pumps waiting by the bed and grabbed her purse, digging through it for a moment. "I've got the room keys, we've both got ID, phones, I've got my totem, you've got the boarding passes-- are we ready?"

Arthur felt his stomach turn, twisting somewhere between excitement and dread, the way it always did before a job. He wished, blindly, stupidly, that he could toss his die and check, but--

"Yeah," he said, and to his surprise, he couldn't help smiling at her. "Let's get the hell out of here."

* * *

"Oh shit, _gum_ ," Ariadne said suddenly, an hour and thirty-seven minutes later. "That's what I forgot to get yesterday."

Arthur turned back from looking out the window at the city sinking beneath them, bemused. "You forgot gum," he repeated.

"My ears pop when I fly," she said, sounding sincerely troubled. "So I need gum."

Arthur laughed, and the sound bubbled out of him loud and unrestrained. Of all the things-- of all the risks and hassles and illegalities of the past two days-- and _this_ was what upset her? He let his head fall back against the seat in relief. His pulse had been beating a percussive rush from the time they stepped out of the hotel room until the jet's nose had lifted into the air three minutes before, and the overwhelming realization that he was getting away, _they_ were getting away, made him effervescent.

Ariadne worked her jaw and swallowed-- trying to pop her ears, he guessed. "You're an ass," she told him, but her voice lacked censure. "I'm going to be doing this _all the way across the Atlantic_ , and you're laughing at me."

"Maybe the flight attendant has some?" he suggested, still snickering a little. "Sorry," he said, helplessly. "Really. It's just--"

Ariadne waved him off. "Man is a giddy thing," she said, and smiled. "Don't worry about it."

They lapsed into silence for a while. The attendant brought them drinks and a blanket for Ariadne, and telling her that he was unable to find any chewing gum on board, really, he was _very_ sorry, Ms. Archer--

"It's all right," Ariadne said glumly. "I'll live."

"Yeah," Arthur agreed. He paused, then said, "So. Back to Paris, huh?"

Ariadne nodded. "Editing, and I've got a conference paper I have to deliver next month in Madrid. I might use the populism stuff from Buenos Aires for that. And I'm supposed to be doing some consulting design work with a firm Miles has a connection with back in Boston if I have the time, which I won't." She shifted sideways in her seat, toeing off her shoes and tucking her bare feet under the armrest. "You?"

"Zurich," he told her. He'd made up his mind sometime in the middle of the night, in between the nightmares and listening to Ariadne's even breaths. "I haven't been there in a couple years, it's central, and I could use some time off. Although I don't think I really have a choice in the matter, right now." He traced the rim of his glass of orange juice with a finger. "Maybe I'll spend some time over at the Kunsthaus. I think they picked up a few new works by Baselitz since the last time I've been there, one of the fractals, I think."

"You and your post-war surrealists."

"Baselitz isn't a surrealist," he said, mild. "If he's anything, he's a realist _cum_ abstract expressionist."

Ariadne sniffed, dismissive. "My apologies," she said, dryly. "So you're going to go look at some paintings. And how long will that keep you busy?"

"As long as I let it," he told her, and turned to look out the window. It was clear, and the Atlantic was a shining blue-black plain beneath them. She was right, of course; he could spend maybe a week in Zurich without work before the urge to move and plan struck, and he doubted he'd be able to find an extraction job just now. Although there were, of course, other projects deserving of his attention.

She was quiet a moment. "Don't go after him alone," she said, her voice low. "Get Cobb, or Yusuf, or-- hell, Eames, if you can track him down-- but don't do it by yourself."

"Ariadne," he began, but she cut him off.

"I'd help you," she said, looking down at her hands. "If you asked."

Arthur shook his head reflexively. "I can't," he told her, his voice thick. "Ariadne, I can't do that with you."

"Okay," she said, nodding rapidly, not looking at him. "That's fine. It doesn't have to be me. Promise me you'll ask someone else, then." He opened his mouth to protest, and she looked up at him, fierce. " _Promise_ ," she insisted, "or I'm following you to Zurich."

He wanted to make some joke about stalking or puppies following people home or something, but she looked so determined that he found himself nodding. "I'll ask someone before I go after him," he said. "I promise."

"Good," she said, and pulled the blanket the flight attendant had left up around her chin, closing her eyes.

Arthur watched her as she fell asleep and the sun set, too fast, behind them.

* * *

 **Lisbon, Portugal.  
21.09.14**

It was one in the morning, and it felt like nine at night.

The airport wasn't deserted-- airports never were, not even when the hours washed away to nothing on a Sunday morning-- but it was close, and Arthur felt conspicuous, walking through the echoing space with Ariadne at his side.

They stopped, as if by a predetermined agreement, in front of a pillar near the main entrance: Ariadne was headed to the taxi stand and then the train station, and Arthur to Zurich by way of the ticket counters.

"So," he said, at a loss. "This is it, I guess." Ariadne didn't say anything, just stared steadily back at him. "Thanks for agreeing to take care of the briefcase for me," he continued awkwardly, and she rolled her eyes.

" _Jesus_ , Arthur," she said, stepping forward to hug him tightly. "You're really bad at this."

"I know," he said, grateful that she would let him have this, even now. "I'm sorry," he told the top of her head. "I suck at good-byes."

Ariadne's shoulders shook gently, and, laughing a little, she said, "You have no idea how not surprised I am by that."

Arthur tightened his arms around her in apology.

"I don't like not talking to you," she said, muffled. He could feel the warmth of her breath through his shirt and vest. "It's stupid. You're-- at the very least I should be able to _talk_ to you."

"I could call," he heard himself offer. She looked up, surprised. "If you want-- I'll call when I get to Zurich. Let you know I'm not dead." He let his hands settle on her hips, the bones of her sharp under his palms. She was wearing lace beneath her skirt: he could feel the pattern through the fabric and lining.

She was quiet a moment, then gave him an uncertain smile. "I'd like that," she said. She reached up, cupping the side of his face in her right hand. Arthur stayed motionless as she rose up on her toes, his eyes half-closing in anticipation of a kiss that wasn't going to happen. He felt the breath of a laugh against his cheek, and she pulled back. "The foundation's wearing off," she told him, passing her thumb lightly over one of the scabbed cuts near his left eye. It was beginning to itch. "You're starting to look a little rough around the edges."

Arthur exhaled noisily, tilting his head back towards the ceiling in mock frustration. "I just spent ten hours on a plane and it's one in the morning," he said, hiding a smile. "I'm allowed to look a little rough."

Ariadne's mouth quirked up at one side, and she slid her hand back from his jaw to tug gently at his hair. Arthur let her pull his head down, unresisting, to rest his forehead against hers. "This," she said, rueful, "is incredibly stupid and I know better," she said, closing her eyes and sounding amused. "Very, very stupid," she repeated, and leaned up to press her mouth against his, soft and warm and insistent. Arthur brought one of his hands up to cup the back of her neck, pulling her closer to him with the other.

He tried to keep the kiss undemanding, to let it be about comfort and familiarity and gratitude and not about desire or need, but Ariadne bit sharply at his bottom lip and he groaned, pulse pounding, and let the ache of the last two years take over. Vaguely, Arthur knew they were probably attracting all sorts of attention they didn't need from bored security guards and sleepy returning vacationers, but he couldn't bring himself to care. She tasted like ginger ale and honey and exhaustion, her breath hitching in her throat, her fingers clutching at his vest. He thought: _If this were Limbo I'd never leave_ , and idea didn't frighten him at all.

Some time later, Ariadne untangled her fingers from his wrinkled vest, pushing lightly against his shoulder. Arthur let her pull away, reluctant and breathing hard. "Yeah, okay," Ariadne said, visibly embarrassed and swallowing rapidly, "that was-- not the smartest thing to do." She was flushed and her lipstick was smudged at the corner of her lips. He had a feeling that his mouth had a similarly blurred appearance.

He cleared his throat, taking a half step back. "Probably not the best timing in the world, no," he agreed, pleased when his voice didn't sound too thick. "So," he said, repeating himself. He shoved his hands into his pockets, afraid he might reach for her again.

Ariadne shrugged awkwardly, and tilted her head in the direction of the taxi stand. "Trains don't wait," she said, sounding shaky. "I'd better go."

"Yeah," he agreed, and then bent down to grab the briefcase at his feet. "Here," he said, and handed it to her. She smiled her thanks. "I'll give you a call when I get in to Zurich," he said.

"That would be good," Ariadne said. She strapped the briefcase to the top of her carry-on bag. "Well." She exhaled. "Take care of yourself, okay?" she said, and he nodded.

"You, too," he told her, and watched as she took the first few steps towards the door. Then she paused, shaking her head and letting go of her suitcase.

She reached into her pocket, walking quickly back over to Arthur. "Here," she said, grabbing his hand and wrapping his fingers around something warm and metallic and feather-light. Arthur looked down to see Ariadne's bishop glinting between his fingers, and opened his mouth to protest. "No," Ariadne said sharply. "I don't need it. I can make something else if I do," she said. "I know it's been bothering you, so-- maybe this will help until you find something else to use."

Arthur swallowed, tightening his fingers around the little chess piece. The bottom rim was slightly uneven, a little rough in places. _Real_. "Ariadne," he said, "god, you don't have to--"

Ariadne stepped back, shaking her head. "I know I don't. I never did, you just don't seem to understand that I _want_ to," she said, and her voice caught a little around the edges. She smiled weakly, fumbling for her suitcase, and turned away. Arthur watched her until she faded out the automatic doors into the wet night beyond. She didn't look back.

He stared down at the totem in his hand, tracing a fingernail along the notch cut in the crown of the bishop, smoothing his thumb along the curve of the base, learning its weight in his hand. He set the piece up in the palm of one hand, and then gently flicked it onto its side with one finger. _Like a penny on a mattress_ , he thought, and felt a two-year-old twist of _something_ loosen in his chest.

Arthur tucked the totem into a pocket, patting it once. "Right," he said, and went to buy a ticket to Zurich. He had a phone call he needed to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second story in the **Truth to be a liar** cycle, _Words and stones_ , will be posted beginning on Wednesday, September 22nd.


End file.
